The Man in Black
by EmidiusQuake75
Summary: The man had many names but to most he was a dark stranger. He was ageless, his face devoid of lines and glowing with a terrible glee that was accented by his black attire. Some had known him as Azrael, the angel of death. And tonight.. he felt mighty fine
1. prologue

Prologue

The man in black stood watchful over the sleepless city flickering a lighter. Stealthy in each movement, he regarded the people from atop his perch of Kelso-Dental Industry, searching with distant eyes, some eternity within each peerless dark orb.

Regardless of the bitter night air, he swept his gaze past the apartment building window of the Pierce family, and little Lindsey Pierce inside asleep in her bed moaned and turned over, as the cold fingers of some nightmare brushed through her mind. The man looked down to the streets of Jump City and saw the people hurrying along in their business, sinful or other. And each person his eyes laid upon felt a same shiver turn up their spines. He looked towards the harbor in the far distance, and saw the hardened seamen drinking their liquor, loading and unloading their cargo, and making ready for sail. As his eyes laid upon each man, they uncannily grew silent, and worked that way for some hours after the man in black turned away his gaze.

Focusing on the Jump City Hospital momentarily, the man flickered the lighter in his right hand again and snapped it shut. He repeated the process and then tilted his head slightly and pocketed his lighter. This would be the city. Far away enough from Gotham to elude the attention of its dark savior, but still within the confines of heavy industry, with its sleepless nights and concentrated population of people. Yes. Jump City would do nicely.

The man in black made his way across the ceiling of Kelso-Dental Industry and leaped to a smaller complex of businesses. Melting into the shadows and smiling into the night, the man in black disappeared into the dark.

ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

"Hey sweetheart ya'on call tonight? Cause if ya'r… then I just might call _you_."

Sarah O'Connely made her way down the corridor of Jump City Hospital ignoring the winking man in the wheelchair. Exhausted from her rounds with the brand new interns that week, she made her way towards the main entrance with every intention of leaving the building and driving back to her apartment for some well-deserved rest. However as she turned the corner towards the elevator, one of the new doctors recently hired, Dr. Webber she read on his nametag, bumped into her shoulder and dropped the charts he'd been carrying.

"Oh! I em very sorey miss O'connyelly," he started in a heavy accent she had trouble placing. Bending over he began to pick up his charts "Please… would you asseest me with ma next pashent? I can' find any ozzer nurses."

Sarah stared at him as her mind slowly computed his thick accent and what it was he wanted.

"Of course Doctor," she started, "but my shift is over and I was hoping to get home soon… perhaps there's another nurse…?"

"No no no! Zer are no ozzer nurses I said! Zey are all busy!"

Sarah considered arguing that she'd just seen miss Slaybough flirting up one of her fracture patients but decided against it. What was one more patient atop all the others she'd seen to that day?

"Yes Dr. Webber. Lead the way." She followed him hurriedly down the hall distractedly wondering why a man with the name of Webber had such a thick accent. Avoiding the janitor as he pulled his trolley down the aisle she realized Dr. Webber was speaking.

"-ave been pouring een like notheeng I thought tyo expect. I was under zey eempression zat this 'opital was quite a bit calmer zen my last but zee few moments ago zay doors practically slam open and all zeese pashents started coming in…" Sarah's tired mind stopped attempting to interpret his accent once she realized it was nothing to do with the patient. She tiredly dragged her feet into one of the smaller rooms after the doctor where a young woman laid in a hospital bed doubled up in a horrible wracking cough.

"Yees hallo miss, I am your Doctor," began Webber over the patient's weezings. Sarah once again wasn't following his words. She was staring out the huge glass windows of the room looking in on the corridor. The hospital had really picked up since the last patient of her rounds 10 minutes before….

She glanced back to the patient and saw that Webber had stopped talking and was now looking to her expectantly. She hurriedly started her second-nature labors of hooking the patient up to the medical equipment. Webber was listing what would be needed to get the patients fever down and sooth the coughing and swelling in her throat. Sarah signed, disappointed in thinking the patient would take but a few minutes.

40 minutes later she stumbled through the doors of Jump City Hospital pulling out the keys to her car. The first thing she planned on doing upon entering her apartment would be to fall into bed, shoes and all.

As Sarah O'Connely twisted her key in the ignition, listening as her little Prius whirred to life quietly, she sneezed three times. Sniffing, she placed her foot on the gas pedal and drove out of the parking lot and off down the street.

ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

Nearly everyone thought there was something wrong with the boy. Anyone that happened upon him steered clear, averting their eyes and quieting slightly, crossing the street even to get away from his restless self.

Garret was an orphan, a thief, a delinquent. He'd been alone since he was 5 on the streets and had hardly spoken to anyone in 6 years. But he felt there was nothing wrong with his mind. He simply enjoyed the company of friends that other people couldn't see.

Walking solemnly down the sidewalk of 32nd avenue, Garret considered the lady he was going to thieve. He'd seen her nearly 9 minutes before and been drawn to her as only one of his gifts could be. He could practically smell the money inside her hot-pink fake-snakeskin purse, and the money he would thieve from her guaranteed at least a week of food. He didn't eat much.

Skipping a beat he proceeded to catch up to her, growing closer, waiting for his chance. The streets were crowded, but he knew to use that to his advantage, losing himself in the crowd almost instantaneously. His victim would hardly realize she'd been robbed before he was gone.

The woman's high heel snagged on a crack in the cement and she stumbled slightly. Without changing expression the boy's hand shot forward in a precise practiced manor. He felt the lady's fingers slip from the slick surface and heard her surprised gasp as she turned to see what had a hold of her purse. "Hey!" she said tightening her fingers on an item no longer in her grasp. Garret was already walking quickly away.

"PUNK!" the lady screeched. "MY PURSE! That boy that boy! He took my PURSE get him!" she said frantically bumping into a gray-haired lady, nearly knocking her out of her walker.

Garret was aware of the people turning towards the lady around him, jostling their bags and purses and brushing past, but he knew that he was already well out of reach. He walked the sidewalk in plain view, but no one saw the boy as he turned down the alley and slipped out quietly on an isolated, nearly deserted street.

Smiling to the little girl to his right he held up the purse in triumph.

"See here missy Sue. I gonna turn this purse into food and a new shirt. Like magic ya'see?" The little girl smiled back at him.

From atop the building that Garret stood under a bird looked down in puzzlement at the boy. There were no crumbs littered on the ground at this time of day, but seeing as it was never a fell deed to check for some, he had flown over and perched to rest before making a scan of the perimeter. And looking down with his shifty beady eyes, the little bird had spied a human baring his teeth at no one, waving about some sort of purse. Though the bird watched this for some few seconds, a bird's attention span is considerably shorter then a human's, and so he flew away with no more thoughts of the boy that smiled to no one.

Garret meanwhile had tucked his prize into his worn gray-green jacket and begun strolling back down the quiet empty street. His feet carried him effortlessly through the city whilst Garret kept his mind nearly completely blank, listening to the distant sounds of the busier sections of the city drifting lazily towards him. The little girls smile flittered through his mind now and then, and distracted distant thoughts of his now dwindling time to use the lady's credit cards before she cancelled them lingered, but other then that he kept his eyes on the ground and his mind far away.

He heard the brand new light blue Prius come rolling up the street before he saw it. It drew his attention because of its slow speed. Hardly any gas was being applied, though the speed limit was 25 on this street (however most people actually felt the limit _should_ be something more like 40, and drove according to that speed as opposed to the posted one.)

Garret stopped on the side of the walkway and stared at the hybrid car as it slowed, shot forward up onto the curve of the sidewalk a ways down from the boy and then braked to a stop. Garret wondered over towards the car weary, but curious. He stepped up to the door and attempted to peer inside, but the windows were oddly fogged up. A hand shot up and slammed into the window bouncing the boys face away from it. Garret let out an embarrassingly girly shriek and tumbled backwards off the curb, landing on his bottom in the street.

Staring up at the car window, eerily fogged up in the oncoming dusk, Garret inched away feeling a sense of dread. Off behind the car Garret saw little miss Sue looking scared and motioning for him to come away from the car. Awkwardly, the boy rose from the street and ran around the car towards little Sue who smiled at him faintly. Garret turned back to the car and saw that the hand had been removed from the window, leaving a wet hand-shaped smear through the fog of the inside of the car. Through the smear he saw a blond woman with her head perched back on the neck-rest staring straight ahead unmoving. Positioning his head to see better Garret saw that the woman's neck was oddly puffy and swollen.

"Beautiful isn't she?" whispered a soft voice in his ear. Jumping slightly the boy turned towards it and saw a tall man dressed in black clothes. He carried an aura of power with him and almost reminded Garret of the Priests from the big cathedrals of the city that tried to lure him into their churches with promises of love from a man named God.

The man in black looked down at the little boy and then to the corpse in the car. He flicked out his lighter and snapped a flame into brief existence and then extinguished it. Looking back to the boy the man said "I used to smoke you know. Nasty habit… I'm trying to quite. Instead of actually lighting the cigarettes I just flicker the lighter."

The boy stared at the man in black with growing unease. His newly acquired pink purse lay forgotten on the ground and he felt a horrible urge to urinate. The man in black glanced once more at Garret and then, smiling, melted back into the shadows as quickly as he'd arrived. Garret, scared by the appearance of such a fellow that could sneak up on him gawked and turned to little miss Sue for an encouraging smile, but she'd disappeared off somewhere.

Unsure of himself, the boy spotted the purse in the street where he'd fallen and quickly fidgeted his way over to it. He picked it up and then found himself staring through the hand-shaped smear on the window of the car. He felt entranced by the sight of the woman. Her motionless breasts at the lack of air being sucked into her lungs. Her Disfigured throat swollen and stretched by the disease. Her vacant eyes lifeless and heavy. And Garret understood what the man in black had said by the beauty of her still body. But he knew that he never wanted to see it again. Too much for his little mind, golly yes.

Garret dragged his eyes away and sprinted from the car as fast as his little 11-year-old legs would carry him. When he paused after 10 minutes or so of running to catch his breath he saw he was close to the harbor. Closer to his city's protectors, the Teen Titans. And as he looked towards the sea, the boy Garret, thief, orphan, delinquent… no one of any importance or significance accept for a nuisance to the police force of Jump City sneezed three times.

In the week and a half that followed the end of Garrets life, he was alone. He eventually crawled into a drainage pipe where a startled and slightly traumatized cityman would find him about a week later, when he would answer a call to a complaint of a horrible stench coming from the drainage systems. Where he would find the little boys lifeless deteriorated corpse, and the purse of Kristy Harlem, who had reported it stolen 18 days before. There in the cramped, dank drain, in his delirious fevered states he begged to see little Sue smile for him as she'd always been willing to do when he was alone. He howled for Peter to come speak with him as he'd always done before, and then they could go skip stones in the park later. But his friends were oblivious to his calls. And he had a feeling as he lay alone a the verge of death that it was the man in black that had caused it.


	2. chapter 1

Silhouetted against a rising sun, Robin stood serene in the calm morning quiet. A gentle breeze whipped through his spiky hair as he scanned the jagged horizon of buildings that made up the edge of his city. His eyes rolled behind his mask taking in the view, enjoying the utter stillness of the streets. Though it was true Jump City was sleepless, there were times when it was at peace. He sighed contentedly.

Sliding back towards the door, Robin's cape snapped in the breeze and he felt his arm muscles tense at the disturbance in the morning air. He'd realized long before that he could no longer live like he had before the mask, even if he'd felt any such desire to give up crime fighting. He was accustomed to paranoia, prepared beyond what was necessarily needed for the protection of Jump City. Startling noises led him to tense up and ready himself for battle. He'd grown hard, and he knew his team had as well to an extent.

He made his way down to the kitchen, slipping down the stairs quietly. He didn't expect anyone up at this hour (after all, his team _was_ made up of teenagers), and was visibly surprised when he spotted Raven sitting cross-legged reading on the couch.

"You're up early." He said pausing near her. Raven glanced up from her book, sparing him only a glance.

"I couldn't sleep." She said impassively. "The City is quiet." Violet eyes peered restlessly back to the pages of her book.

"Yea I noticed" Robin said cheerily, "pretty nice for a change."

She rolled one bright violet eye on him but chose not to say anything. Robin noted that her eyes remained motionless when they returned to the page, but said nothing of it. He walked over to the kitchen and began rummaging through the fridge, callously avoiding the numerous molding scraps in hopes of finding something edible. Pursing his lips as something yellow nearly oozed onto his hand, he snapped the fridge shut and turned to consider the pantry. Before he'd realized what he was doing, he let out a blithe hum and did a small skip-to towards it.

"Are you always so cheery this early?" Raven asked dryly.

Robin glanced towards her and smiled. "I'm a morning person," he stated in a rehearsed tone of voice.

A blaring of sudden sharp wails cut the silence, and both Raven and Robin were heading towards the great monitors of the Tower before either of them had had any time to process what was happening. Robin glanced up at the huge screen and saw that they were being signaled to a place called Jey-Diamonds in the older section of town. Rolling his eyes at the cliché crime, robin turned towards the east-side door just as it slid open. Cyborg, Beastboy and Starfire all stumbled through looking drunk from being pulled out of deep sleep. Robin assessed that they were sobering quickly however.

Cyborg glanced at the monitor and then to Robin awaiting orders. Beastboy and Starfire were both looking to him as well, waiting. Robin considered making a pun about all the attention being on him but couldn't strive quickly enough for any such at the moment.

Instead he compensated with "Titans, GO!"

Quickly, precisely, and near professionally, the Titans left the tower in a flurry, leaving the room behind them quiet and dark.

oooooooooooooooooooooooo

Simon Gashtor was completely unaware that he was being monitored as he slid one spidery hand through the hole he'd cut in the Jey-diamond glass case and reached for a $36,000 bracelet. He'd nearly succeeded in blacking out the power to the security-cameras when he'd shut down the main systems and alarm, but, unfortunately for him, he'd forgotten to switch the circuit of one camera, which recorded one of the high quality special-wedding cases, and by the time he'd slipped out of the view of the camera, a few of Jump City's finest hailed police-force members were already well aware that Simon was in the process of robbing enough jewels to allow him to retire with full pension 30 times over. Before any orders were given, Kevin Talley had already signaled the Titans to the site. Only afterwards, as a second thought, did he consider the force taking the crook on theirselves. He was later brought to HQ to answer to head-officer Kelly for his "rash, lazy decision". But too late. For the moment the Titans were already signaled.

By the time Simon had finished robbing as much as he dared to carry among the streets of Jump City he was already surrounded on all sides. In the brief moments Robin regarded the man, he witnessed him steal some few jewels from a case (almost as though he didn't want to empty an entire case by itself), and then cough nervously into his hand before moving on to the next case. Simon didn't hear the Titans enter, but when he turned towards the back door of the building he saw the shadow of a boy blocking the way. His instinct screamed at him to run from the boy, and his intuition (one of the many traits he prided himself in) told him he didn't want to fight this character, but his brain argued it was but a boy, and for the first time in Simon Gashtor's life he ignored his intuition and, placing his leather bag of diamonds on the floor, he unsnapped the holster of a tiny handgun he had strapped to his left shoulder.

"Get you back bairn. I'll not have you come close savvy?" he shouted across the room. His voice sounded hollow in the silence of the dark room but the sound of it slightly raised his confidence. He coughed into his hand and for a moment his face looked sallow and pained. He began panting slightly but was unaware of it. This Robin, as well as Cyborg watching quietly from the front entrance in plain view, noted for possible further use. He continued, "Ye've seen nothing of this bairn. Ye savvy? I was never here and neither were you." He pulled his gun from its holster and waved it in a _get!_ gesture.

The boy stepped forward into the light and Simon felt his heart sink down to the floor as he recognized him. He wore a black mask over his eyes and a red and green uniform. Black spiky hair protruded from his scalp, and handsome features hinted beneath his mask. The leader of the Teen Titans. He stepped back feeling the cold dregs of panic brush his mind. The Teen Titans! Come to take down wittle ol' him? Nay, he was mistaken surely. He began to laugh and then coughed again, spittle flying from his chapped lips.

"Yar, ye got me deft I reckon," he said, nervously raising his gun and pointing it at Robin. His hand shook slightly.

Robin eyed him, "Put down the gun now. Give me the bag and turn yourself in to the cop waiting outside" He said quietly. Simon thought the kid sounded as though he were used to being obeyed. His voice carried across the room and Cyborg heard him as if he was standing right next to him. Simon glared forward, snapped the safety button of his handgun and pulled the trigger. The events that followed happened so quickly that Simon wasn't aware that his game was completely up until he realized he was sitting in a cop car outside the building handcuffed.

Raven's eyes snapped white from her position standing at a large display window towards the front end of the store. The bullet flashed a dark chilling glow and stopped in mid-flight still far from its destination. Cyborg fired off a miniature version of his sonic-cannon mounted on his right shoulder and Simon's gun spun out of his hand and landed off to the side, skidding some ways across the floor smoking slightly. Robin leaped forward, pulling out his retractable staff with god-like speed; he snapped it to the side and around landing a blow on the side of the Simon's head, who fell to his knees with a yell, reaching up and grasping his head. Beastboy trotted forward in his wolf-form, followed by a nervous looking policeman that had agreed to come in and cuff the man when he was brought under control. Beastboy sat down next to Simon, curled his tail around his feet and smiled at him, coming out as a ferocious bare of teeth in his wolf shape. Simon yelped and stumbled to his feet, swaying slightly still groggy from the blow to his head. He ran towards the policeman holding out his hands.

"Cuff me cuff me! Yon bairns are demons! Culls! Cuff me ye deft!" Simon glanced over his shoulder at Beastboy, who had shifted back to his human form and continued to sit on the ground smiling at Simon. Raven, Cyborg and Robin walked over and stood next to him as the policeman cuffed Simon Talley and led him outside. Starfire flew down from her perch that she'd been posted and landed lightly next to Raven.

"Dude! That was_ one _dude! Why couldn't the policedudes handle him without us? I was expectin' some sort of army of brain munching undead provoked back to life through the corrupt sales of the diamond industry placed above their long-buried bodies." Beastboy complained from the ground.

"Serious, its like they can't handle _anything_ without us anymore… Maybe we should start charging." Cyborg said, watching the policeman push the thief into the car and close the door. As he watched, the man coughed again, this time violently, into the back of the front car seat. "I mean it looks like the guys gotta cold… do these guys even have any requirements to join the force? You'd think they should at least be able to take down a sick physco desperado."

Robin was giving the cop car (now driving away) a trifle irritated look but turned to them all the same. "We help whenever he can with whatever we can. Any crime committed is eligible for our services." He said flatly.

Still sitting on the floor, Beastboy looked at Cyborg and started a silent rant, opening and closing his mouth and crossing his eyes. Luckily for him Robin had already started moving off towards the door and didn't see him. Cyborg gave him an amused look but didn't laugh.

"Who's up for a round of breakfast pizza?" Robin called over his shoulder.

"I would be thrilled to engorge myself in the eating of the breakfast pizza!" Starfire said delightedly levitating herself from the ground and following after him.

Cheerily, the Titans followed him out of the building leaving the mess for the police to clean up.

oooooooooooooooooooooo

Sylvia Estada had never questioned herself for her choice in career her whole life. If anything, she prided herself most in her job. She was an autopsic surgeon.

She was currently examining a man brought in from the local prison. He'd apparently been sick when he'd entered the ward, but the doctors couldn't recognize any known virus or disease present in him, and so they'd locked him up until his eventual death a week and a half later. Examining the chart she glanced at his name: Simon Gashtor. _Well Gashtor ol'boy_, she though, _Let's see what's gotcha feelin' so down in the dumps._

She pulled up her mask and then slid back the sheet covering her specimen. She first took note of his swollen throat. The disease had blemished and stretched the skin, swelling up until his head rolled on a thick neck nearly the width of his head. She scratched a note on her clipboard and then allowed her eyes to assess the rest of his body.

He had a sallow, unnatural thinness to him that suggested a quick loss in a great amount of weight. His eyes were already in their early stages of deterioration, but she could just make out a blood-shot look in what was left of them. Mucus encrusted his top lip under his nose and his mouth hung open slightly from breathing his last rattled breaths through it.

She continued to make notes but she felt her eyes keep skipping back to the man's throat. She knew of some virus's that caused a swelling in the throat, but this was way too much for any of the ones she could think of. The way the mottled, blemished skin seemed to whisper death rattled her slightly.

She felt a cold sense of dread creep into her as she continued to look at the dead man before her, but shoved it away. She had a job to do, she sure did. No time for being all affright over someone that was already dead. She paused for a moment and then picked up her scalpel and sliced open Simon Gashtor.

ooooooooooooooooooooooo

Some few hours later Sylvia was making her way towards her office. She was in a foul mood. She'd determined the cause of death and had them written down as a list of symptoms on her clipboard. But the problem was she couldn't determine the _cause_ of the causes of his death. She'd never seen a disease that caused the terrible disfigurations, nor had she found anything relatively close in the archives when she'd attempted to find an answer through research.

She stopped in front of a door marked S. Estada and entered. She flicked her papers onto her desk and sat down malcontent. It wasn't that she'd get in any trouble for her failure. The case had been strictly voluntary and was merely a research opportunity, seeing as the doctors at the jail hadn't been able to diagnose it. But Sylvia was one of the few brilliant youth of her time. She had an eye for detail and a vast and extensive knowledge of medical science. She wasn't used to failure, and not being able to do her job annoyed her very much.

She sighed and turned to her computer. She logged in the data she'd discovered (which was disappointingly lax) and then sat back and considered her monitor. While she gazed at the computer, Sylvia Estrada sneezed twice.

Upon her death a week and a half later, the medical staff mourned the loss of one of their best autopsy surgeons. They were disappointed that they wouldn't be able to assign her to her own case, seeing as the disease that felled her had baffled the hospital's finest doctors and its symptoms were beginning to show up in similar cases. If anyone could have figured out what this new strange sickness was, headstrong, brilliant Sylvia Estrada could have. But Sylvia was dead now, and obviously couldn't take her own case. And so her cause of death was put down as a list of symptoms, rather then the name of a disease. Because as far as the doctors of Jump City knew, the disease that had begun to spread, starting with the nurse that had been late in getting off shift, and been briefly spotted through a high window of the Jump City hospital by a man in black, didn't exist.

oooooooooooooooooo

Beastboy lounged in a chair on the outside balcony of Carl'n'Jo's 24-hour Pizzaria with his feet up on the table. Raven sat across from him eyeing him, silently berating him to remove his shoes, but Beastboy remained blissfully ignorant to her glare. Cyborg and Robin sat to the left of him regarding a menu with serene concentration and Starfire sat to the right looking delightedly at another menu in front of her.

"Why do we not try the "mega-gnarly death match" pizza yes?" she said glancing up. Cyborg looked up from his menu and stared at her for a moment with his mouth slightly agape. His eyes dropped back to the menu to find what pizza she was talking about.

Beastboy glared over at her and opened his mouth to comment that that _definitely_ sounded like a pizza loaded down with meat but Robin cut him off. "um Star…" he began, "That's just a boxing advertisement. Its not a pizza choice."

"Oh…" She glanced back down to her menu puzzled. Why on earth they would put an ad for boxing in the menu if it wasn't a food choice?

The sun was just rising to the point where the shadows were no longer elongated and the morning chill was wearing off. A warm gleam of light began to brush the skin of the Titans, and Robin could hear the twittering of city birds as they started their morning rounds of scavenging the trash of Jump City.

"I say we get sausage since it's a breakfast pizza." Cyborg said.

"Dude! How many times are we gonna go over this? I'm not eating meat!" Beastboy exclaimed. Cyborg looked at him with exasperation.

"It ain't like ya gotta eat it man. _You _can get yer little tofu-pizza and we _normal _ones will get a sausage one." Beastboy narrowed his eyes and opened his mouth to make a retort but before he could he was cut off by a little girls screams.

"Mommy mommy ist da boogey man! Da booo-oo-ooogy man mommy I sawed him! He was in my window mommy! I SAWED HIM!" Beastboy glanced down to the street below the balcony and saw a little girl being dragged by the hand of a tired looking woman. Interested, Beastboy transformed his ears into a hare's, and perked them forward, striving to hear the mother speaking with his elongated ears.

"It's ok baby, mommy scared him away for you and he wont be able to find you at the nursery. But we have to hurry or mommy's going to be late for work, and then she wont be able to get enough money to keep the boogey man away. So we have to be quiet and hurry to the nursery ok?"

"But I sawed him mommy! He sca'ed me." The woman hushed her child once more and led her down the street.

"Dude," began Cyborg, "you look ridiculous like that." Beastboy turned towards him and realized he was referring to his ears and quickly slid them back into their regular form.

"Whatever man" He said. "You know you're just jealous of my devilishly handsome features." He licked his green fingers and slicked back his hair, pushing the little girls memory to the back of his mind. Robin and Starfire both started laughing at him and Raven gave a small smirk.

"What?" said Beastboy indignantly.

40 minutes later the Titans were making their way back to the tower. Raven, Beastboy and Starfire were flying ahead and Cyborg and Robin were in the T-car. Cyborg wasn't 10 minutes from the tower when a white Ford Escape swerved out from a driveway in front of the car ahead of him. The car ahead skidded for a moment as its handler slammed on the brakes, but the cars collided with a loud scraping noise, despite the driver's best effort.

"WO!" yelled Cyborg as he braked hard and spun out the back wheels to the right, bringing the car to a stop. Robin was unbuckled and outside the T-car seconds after they'd stopped, running towards the cars. Cyborg followed close behind.

"Everyone ok in there?" Robin asked leaning down next to the first car that had knocked over to its side. He noticed the airbag hadn't inflated and guessed it had malfunctioned. A scared looking girl glanced out from the driver's seat and looked at him as though she didn't quite comprehend what was happening.

"wha…?" she moaned. Robin reached up and pulled the door open. It smacked loudly against the street and he reached in and unbuckled her. Pulling her out he determined she'd smacked her head against something in the car and probably had a concussion. Her hair was matted with blood.

"Cyborg-" Robin started glancing over his shoulder.

"Already on it man." Cyborg said. He scanned his database and transmitted a signal to the Jump City Hospital, calling for an ambulance to their current location. Robin had laid the girl on the street and made his way to the other car. The entire front end of it was smashed in and the windows were oddly fogged up. He snagged the car handle and pulled the door open. He gasped as humid, warm air poured out of the car and a man in the front seat moaned and reached a sweaty pale hand towards him.

"Watch out!" he moaned grasping Robin's cape. "He comes to you in your dreams. He comes for you in your dreams!" His words were muffled and ragged _wash'oud, 'e com' to you in eyor daa-eems…_ He began to cough violently, his eyes glazed over with fever. Robin stepped back but the man's grasp remained on his cape. Robins eyes rested on the man's neck and he was disturbed to see it swollen and disfigured. The skin was mottled and stretched, and the man's throat was swollen, forming unnatural chins on the man's thin pale neck. He was shaking violently and a grotesque heat radiated from his body. He bared his teeth in a pained smile and partly fell out of the car, still clinging to Robin.

"He'll come for you. He comes for us all… the Still Wanderer. The Blood King. He…" Da _still wannndea'. Da Blood Keen. Hee… thh…_ Robin opened his mouth to try to calm the man down but he would have nothing of it. He pulled on Robin's cape till Robin was forced to bend down slightly. He felt Cyborg move up behind his back but he flicked his hand up behind his back. _Stay where you are_. The man pulled in a rattled breath and whispered into Robin's ear.

"The Man in Black." His grasp finally fell from Robin's cape and the man fill to the street, his eyes rolling up above his lids and fluttering shut.

Robin stared down at him, his face hard and expressionless. In the distance he could hear the faint sirens of a Jump City ambulance as it made its way towards them. He became aware of the traffic, partially blocked by the wreckage, and the people that were slowly inching their way around the totaled vehicles. He heard Cyborg talking to one of the other Titans over their com link, explaining what had happened and telling them everything was fine and they'd be back soon. But these sounds were distant in his mind, muffled like they were submerged in water. Robin was concentrating on what the man laying at his feet had said in his fevered delirium. The man in black. And as he stood next to the wreck, surrounded by a partially muted city, he was aware that the question crossing his mind was eerily similar to a question he'd asked the first robot of Slade's he'd defeated. _Who is Slade?_ "Who is this man in black?"


	3. Chapter 2

Robin sat thrumming his thumbs gently against the main common room table of the tower listening to Raven patiently asking Cyborg questions concerning the diseased man they'd run across on the way back to the tower. Cyborg was steady and composed, but both Robin and Raven could see the incident had had a toll on the usually tough teenager. His voice was steady, but he was fumbling with his memories.

Upon entering the tower awhile back Robin had sat down and remained quiet and still, delving deep within himself to indulge in thought. Seeing him in this fashion, Raven hadn't even tried to question him for further information then what Cyborg had given her over the com link, but had instead immediately looked to Cyborg for answers. Beastboy and Starfire were sitting on the couch listening to Raven's questioning. Beastboy, a bit fidgety, kept glancing towards his game controls and Starfire's face had a faint concentrated look as she followed the conversation closely to the best of her abilities.

"Did he say anything else concerning the man in black other then 'he comes in your dreams and he is the "blood king" and "still wanderer"?" Raven asked peering at Cyborg with emotionless eyes.

"Nope… well except he said he comes _for_ you in your dreams. But other then

that…" Cyborg paused and glanced away from Raven to the floor for a moment in consideration. "I don't think he said anything else."

Raven considered her next question before continuing. "Had he died before you left the scene?" she asked.

"No. He was still alive. But he didn't look so good…." Cyborg glanced back up to Raven.

Robin paused in his thrumming at his seat. He didn't look so good… no indeed. The man had been suffering from some god-awful and unknown disease. The first doctors that arrived in the ambulance at the collision site had recognized the symptoms almost immediately. They said it was an unknown and hardly recognizable disease that had been showing up in a few cases throughout the city. Any man that could inflict such sickness upon someone was definitely not someone he was looking forward to meeting. Oh no. He'd already dealt with a madman with the power to kill his friends with something placed in their blood.

Remaining unaware of his physical self, Rabin outwardly flinched as some scant few memories of Slade flittered to the front of his mind. He shoved them back with weary familiarity and continued on with his thoughts, hardly aware of Cyborg glancing over at his movement.

A man that could inflict such terrible disease seemed just as bad, if not worse than the power Slade had held over them. However, they didn't actually _know_ if there was such a man. One of the first lessons in dealing with sick people is not to take anything said in a fevered delirium serious. However, to discount such findings would be just as foolish. He thrummed his fingers on the wood of the table. Once. Twice. And his thoughts on the man in black continued on and on.

oooooooooooooooo

Raven was finally content that she'd gotten everything she possibly could out of Cyborg and now sat quietly on the couch with a slight resemblance to Robin. Cyborg stepped down from the stool he'd been perched on testingly and when Raven gave him no look he hurried out of the room.

Raven wasn't aware of how close her thought process was to Robin's as she sat considering Cyborg's account, but she had a feeling that by the end of the day they wouldn't come to the same conclusion. Robin, she knew, would be ready and eager to fight this "man in black". He would be researching and planning and scouting the city before the next day's dawn. Raven however was still very well aware of how little they knew of this man, and bitterly aware that they couldn't pinpoint anything on him, or even prove his existence. Robin was already certain that the Man in Black was their next big bad villain. Raven wasn't sure he was anything other than the crazed imaginings of a very sick man.

oooooooooooooooo

"That's it then?"

"Yea." Said James, tottering slightly from exhaustion staring at the picture on the monitor that head officer Kelly was gesturing towards.

"That's the little bugger."

Kelly marveled at the picture of the influenza virus in front of him which had begun to pick up the name Red's Master and Captain Red due to the way the virus manipulated the blood of it's victim and caused red splotches to appear on the diseased person's neck. How was it that they knew what it looked like but they couldn't stop it? That he and his force had managed to stop mass killings and put physco criminals behind bars but couldn't save the people from the terrible looming death that threatened them even now? He shook his head slightly in frustration.

"Has word reached the President yet James?" he inquired still gazing at the monitor in front of him.

"Ay sir. His orders are to keep the populace at bay. Keep media on the subject to a minimum and order up the perimeter as soon as is humanly possible. No one's to leave or enter the city until this mess is figured out, sir." James swayed once again as his eyes lost their focus momentarily. He caught his balance and returned his attention to Officer Kelly.

"Very well private, dismissed. Go get some rest you look like you haven't slept in a week." He nodded his head as James offered him a quick salute and then stumbled towards the door. With his hand on the handle Private James paused and considered something. He turned back to the head officer.

"Sir, should we notify the teen titans of what's going on?" He felt the familiar twinge in his belly that he always got when he didn't obey an order immediately but he held his ground. Besides, Kelly didn't look angry at his disobedience but thoughtful as to his question.

"Leave them be" he said. "They'll probably figure it out on their own in due time. We want this to be reclusive as possible. A panic in the city will turn this mess into an H-bomb rather than the hand grenade it is. Dismissed, private."

James quickly exited the room.

Turning back to the monitor Kelly narrowed his eyes at the picture of the virus slightly and sighed heavily. He picked up a file folder and flipped through the papers and then paused as an annoying tickle flared up his nose. He bent over and sneezed once, keeping a firm grip on his papers as he did so. The thought of the newly posted paper he'd just ordered up throughout the headquarters that read "If you feel sick in any way report to a doctor for a checkup IMMEDIATELY no matter how small a symptom" never even crossed his mind.

ooooooooooooooooo

"BOO YA!" Cyborg leaped from the couch of the Titans tower main living room, tossing aside his game controls and starting up a victory dance.

Spinning towards Beast Boy he pointed towards the green changeling and yelled, "BOW before me inferior green one! Your better has conquered your aspirations for victory ONCE again!" He hopped up onto the table continuing to point at Beast Boy. "OOOOOO YEAAA!" he yelled beginning to spin around in circles on one foot.

Beast Boy, feeling this show only accomplished in making Cyborg sound like the Kool-Aid Pitcher, sat irritable on the couch holding his game control limply in his right hand considering a declaration of re-match. Starfire meanwhile had joined Cyborg on the table and was hopping up and down with him. "Oh how wondrous!" she called, "Cyborg has yet again done the kicking of the butt to friend Beast Boy! Perhaps some Yeti snrott-blorg is in due order, yes?"

"Too late Star!" said Cyborg beginning to calm down. "I've already snrotted BB today" he said stepping down from the table grinning.

"Dude… you know that was luck… if that plane hadn't passed over ahead and distracted me I SO would have beat you!" The usual excuse: luck.

"ya huh." Cyborg smirked and sat back down on the couch. "If that were true… you'd be able to beat me a second time 'round." He snatched up the game controls and entered as player one, then glanced over to Beast Boy expectantly. However Beast Boy had become preoccupied, and was staring out the great glass wall of the Tower room. Cyborg glanced over and saw a flock of gulls heading out towards the sea but nothing he found particularly interesting.

"duuuude…..?" Cyborg tried to rouse Beast Boy's attention (a difficult task indeed), but Beast Boy continued to stare out the window, now accompanied with a look of unease upon his face. Cyborg looked on puzzled and then lurched himself up off the couch and strode over to the green changeling.

Gently he prodded Beast Boy in the shoulder, "helloooo?" Beast Boy's gaze seemed to clear and he snatched his eyes away from the window towards Cyborg.

"The birds…" he started uneasily.

"What about them?" Cyborg said wearily. Just what they needed now was Beast Boy to start up weird 'bird episodes.' Cyborg imagined Beast Boy stopping in the middle of a battle to stand and gawk at a flock of birds flying overhead. He sighed and returned his attention to what the changeling was saying.

"…it's the middle of June. And it's the middle of the afternoon. It's not their mating season and it's not winter… The only reason for such a big flock of birds to fly out to sea like that at this time is if they're spooked off." Beast Boy had a relatively serious and puzzled tone of voice that Cyborg felt didn't fit him very well. He glanced back out the window to the now tiny flock on the horizon.

"Maybe they're just doin' some construction or somethin in the city" he shrugged. Beast Boy stared at him for a few minutes and then strode off towards the door.

Yea… maybe. I'm gonna go out for a while. I'll be back later." The door slid shut with a whir and snapped closed before he'd said his last word. Cyborg continued to stare at the door for a few seconds adjusting to the brisk, abrupt exit of Beast Boy. He didn't like the way everyone was so tense lately. It made him feel like something big was coming. Something just as big as Trigon.

ooooooooooooooooooo

The Man in Black watched the little boy lie on the ground struggling to breath. He licked his dry lips, staring intently at the diseased boy with a sickly look of hunger. He watched as the boy doubled up and coughed violently and then lay back down on the ground. He had crawled into his playhouse in the backyard of his house, most likely following a fever-induced logic that he had hidden here before from his parents when they'd been angry with him, and perhaps he could hide here from his own looming death as well. He was completely unaware of the Man In Black's presence.

He'd been sick for nearly two weeks now, but his mom was in the middle of taxing season at her job and had been barely home lately, and his dad had assumed it was just a cold. He drew in a cold ragged breath and wished things could go back to the way they used to be. When his mom had brought him home sweets and his dad had tousled his hair and offered to take him out for a game of catch with the football. When the most important thing to him was the upcoming Lord of the Rings movie and going out to play with Charlie from next door. But his parents had taken to arguing a lot lately, and now he was sick and they had hardly noticed.

The Man In Black sat down cross-legged next to the boy and pulled out his worn silver lighter. He flicked it on and off and then pocketed it again. He loved the smell of the virus. He could pick the black presence within the infected victims for miles with his nose. The pungent odor of death had been thick in the city for the last few days and the people were still only barely aware of it's presence. The virus was spreading, and his time was coming. He closed his eyes and breathed deeply, taking in the damp, earthy smell of the boy's playhouse and the dark, wet stench that came from the boy. Slowly the dark man's boots lifted from the ground and hovered a few feet above it. The man opened his eyes and felt the power of the boy's looming death flow through him as he levitated. He gave a small smile and uncrossed his legs, reaching down and gently tapping down on the earth again. He had to wait but a few more days.

ooooooooooooooooo

Doctor Benning stared down the hall sick to her stomach. The walls were lined with wriggling and squirming patients waiting for attendance. The ground was littered with still bodies that had yet to be removed that people tripped over and trampled as they called out for help. Hands weakly groped for her coat calling for assistance. The Jump City Hospital was writhing with death. All the rooms were filled, some with two patients to a bed, and all the doctors were attending to as many patients at once as possible. The sounds of hacking and coughing and crying bounced off the walls and seemed to drill into her ears. The plague had come in the last few weeks and no one knew how to stop it. The doctors worked were exhausted, attempting to fight a virus that they themselves had contracted. No one was quite sure what to do or what they should be doing, but no one stopped long enough to consider it.

Dr. Benning felt something warm sliding down her cheek and for a moment thought she was crying. However when she reached up and touched it she realized it was too thick and sticky to be tears. With a sickening queasy feeling to her stomach she looked around to find the source of the blood. A man with a massive nosebleed to her left was coughing violently. She averted her eyes quickly feeling ashamed of herself. She was a doctor! Blood and gore and disease wasn't supposed to upset her….

As she turned back to try and help the man she noticed an odd looking green boy. Her first thought was that the boy was sick with the virus and his green skin was a new symptom. However upon further examination she realized it was one of the Teen Titans, Beast Boy. Puzzled she watched as he helped support a coughing woman and then shuffle away towards a little girl crying for her mother, rough coughs interrupting her sobs. He smiled warmly at her and transformed into a tiny green-furred kitten with amazingly large and brilliantly emerald eyes. Though Benning had seen this transformation on the news before, his transformation amazed her and she found herself gawking.

The green kitten meowed softly and butted its head against the little girls knee, who sniffed and reached out a hand to pat his head. She smiled, temporarily forgetting her tears, and Beast Boy purred loudly. The little girl continued to pet Beast Boy and he started to look around the room. His feline eyes landed on her and stuck for a moment. He stood up on all four legs and looked at the little girl expectantly. She obediently stood and made to follow him. The pair made their way over towards her where upon arrival Beast Boy took to his regular, more human form. The little girl's hand automatically found it's way into his and he led her closer to Benning still.

"What's happening here?" he asked quietly.

"Plague" Dr. Benning answered. Her voice cracked.

The little girl still holding Beast Boy's hand began to cry again.


	4. Chapter 3

"ARGH" Robin grunted as he smashed his fist into the punching bag. He used his momentum to spin around and land a heavy roundhouse kick followed with a punching blow. The bag shook violently and then stilled. Robin stared at it, his eyes glazed over and unfocused.

The news Beast Boy had brought back with him from the hospital had left him in a near shocked state of mind. He had no idea how to cure a plague. He had no idea how to save his city. He wasn't the Batman… he couldn't use chemistry to find impossible cures or use science to create new techniques for defeating his foes. He felt completely helpless against the disease he'd witnessed those few days before in the car accident. That disease which seemed to be spreading at an incredible rate. Physco mass murderers, deadly creatures, mutated chemically enhanced people… he could deal with those. But something microscopic enough to be invisible to the human eye, to be multiplied by the millions and deathly contagious, something he couldn't touch or smell or see… he didn't know how to deal with that. The only thing he could think of to do was to look for the Man in Black that the infected man had spoken of. However, he had absolutely no leads of any unknown phantom showing up in people's dreams or terrifying persons during the night. There were also no records that he could find describing a man in black that had committed any recent crimes. He had prowled the streets 5 extra hours the night before and he'd found no sign of any disturbances. There was no sign of any new villains within Jump City.

Sighing disheartened, Robin peeled off his sweatbands from his wrists and threw them in a basket in the corner of the training room. He walked out of the room and headed down the hall towards the common room, hoping to talk to Cyborg or Raven about the plague. Cyborg had been researching the common symptoms and attempting to search for any possible cures. Raven had been peeling through the city with her mind's eye hoping to find something or someone to help cure their assailing influenza. She however could only keep her mind open for short periods of time due to the amount of delusional patients suffering from fever. Keeping herself exposed to unstable people threatened her mind barriers, and Robin didn't want to risk her at such a crucial time.

As he strode down a particularly long stretch of hall he came upon a tall, looming window. From inside the hall Robin could see the stream of star and moonlight pouring in and pooling on the floor. Dust particles danced in the light before the window like merry elves. The window itself seemed to stretch unnaturally high, hovering before him as he drew closer. He walked past and the night outside seemed to press itself against the glass, making the window seem incredibly frail. A sliver of nothing between him and some dark thing creeping outside in the dark.

Robin strode past the window coolly, his head held high like nothing was wrong, but he was fearfully aware of the symptoms of the phobia he was experiencing. Lately Robin had taken an extreme disliking to the dark, but he had no idea why. He'd never experienced any stress upon the sun's disperse before, but as of late he was deeply ashamed to have become nearly terrified of the night's ominous presence. He came to a silver door at the end of the hall and it slid open with a hiss. Entering the main common room he spotted Cyborg sitting at the massive computer system mounted on the east wall.

"Any luck?" he asked. His voice came out cold and irritated and he winced internally. Cyborg glanced over from the computers and shook his head wearily.

"Well keep at it," he said, making a conscious effort to sound kind. He turned and left the room feeling an irrational sense of anger and quickly made his way to the stairs where he wouldn't run into anyone and snap at them. He needed to get out and patrol. He needed to find the Man in Black.

Finding his way through the main doors he ended up out on the tiny island in the center of Jump City's bay that served as the base of the Tower. Small black waves prodded the rocky coast and the lights from the peer illuminated the tower in light. Eerie silence drifted across the water and seemed to press against him, enhancing the shadows and whispering dread. He shuddered, suddenly aware of the encompassing night, and peered towards the business section of the city where the tallest towers stretched toward the sky like upraised hands. The night seemed almost a corporeal being and heinous phantoms began to take shape in the dark between him and the city. His heart began hammering in his chest. _Dark… it's so dark. Why am I so afraid?_

Robin stood silent and still. His throat tightened and his breathing became shallow. He felt as though some unknown, dark creature was holding him in place, restricting his movement, his rational thought, his self-control…. The shadows leapt out at him and lashed with weapons, talons, teeth, tentacles. His heart pounded within his chest, making his ribs feel too small to contain the pressure his heart required. Something heavy dropped into Robin's stomach and the air suddenly felt freezing as sweat broke out on his skin. The darkness pressed up to him, prodding at his skin, and a wave of goose bumps shivered their way up his arms. _Dark…. _Suddenly, Robin felt an icy grasp clutch him and he was aware that he had the choice to either run from where he stood or die. He didn't know what threatened him but he was as aware of the looming danger as if someone pointed a gun at him in plain view. _Run or die_.

Robin, fearless leader of the Teen Titans who had on numerous occasions risked his life for the better of people he'd never met before, who'd faced villainous, psychotic beings and survived undefeated, who's battled wraiths, creatures, sorceresses, and criminals, turned tail and fled the maelstrom of black twilight.

oooooooooooooooooooooo

The Man in Black stood on the harbor, looking out across the depths of water, and smiled. The boy was sprinting across the island toward the front doors of the Tower. He wouldn't be patrolling tonight… or any other night in the near future. He sighed content and snapped out his flicker. Teenagers were so easy.

He turned back toward the city and looked out across the dock. It was nearly completely empty. Those sailors and citizens that weren't sick were home grieving their dead or taking care of the dying. He sighed content. So delicious.

The man started strolling back toward the city striking up a whistled tune. Now that the little Teen Titan leader was taken care of he had a meeting to catch with a man that he felt shared his ambitions and qualities. With a good choice of words he felt that they would come to an understanding and share the dark city he was creating together. After all he didn't want to have to deal with _every_ little nuisance that popped up, such as the one he'd just dealt with. The Man in Black laughed out loud into the night.

ooooooooooooooooooooo

"Azereth… metrion… zinthos…" Raven sighed exhausted. The city was quiet. Silent. But whenever she closed her eyes and sent out her mind everything was roaring. People were weeping, crying, shouting, screaming. The streets were writhing with pain and death and insanity. It was nearly impossible to make sense of anything, but she'd been trying for hours. She finished up her meditation and took in a deep breath. She let it out slowly and shifted position, cross-legged on her bed. Once more Raven sent her spirit-form out into the city.

The little girl grabbed her daddy's gun from his desk and- 

_A man wept over his wife's dead, frail corpse and-_

"_AHHHHHH!" a boy screamed, sprinting down the deserted street. He suddenly doubled up in wracking coughs and fell to his knees and-_

_The little girl pointed the gun at her mirror and pulled the trigger. Glass shattered and fragments pierced themselves into her skin. She dropped the gun crying out loud clutching at her face and-_

_A young intern pierced a needle into a frail looking woman, tears streaming down his face and-_

_A bright yellow Mustang GT skidded into a small Ford truck. The owner inside was so concentrated on coughing and getting the phlegm out of his throat that he didn't realize he'd been in a car accident until the airbag slammed open and-_

_A crazed dog leapt out from behind the trashcan and attacked the little boy. The dog's owner had been dead for a week and the dog hadn't had anything to eat since then and-_

_The hospital writhed with death. Hands reached up from the floors of the halls begging for a merciful death and-_

_The woman wailed hysterically clutching her dead baby to her breast. She wouldn't let anyone come near her or her child and-_

_The man wore nothing but shorts. He was laughing hysterically, delusional from fever and wielding a shotgun. He squealed with delight and shot one… two… three innocents and-_

The man in black stood across the bay staring at the Tower smiling.

Raven gasped as her mind slammed back into her physical body. The force with which she returned sent her sprawling from her position onto the floor. She lay gasping on the floor with a thin layer of sweat beading on her skin. That man! There was something wrong with him. There was a dark aura that her mind's eye had picked up. He was a vessel to something evil and sinister. Something with an all-consuming touch and a dark, twisted soul. For a moment Raven was entirely certain that that man was the one Robin was searching for. He was the man in black. However as she sat up from the floor and regained control of herself doubt settled back in. Was all this plague and horror really being caused my one man? By _that_ man? She pulled her knees up to her chest and considered her options. Finally she decided on telling Robin of him. Slowly she stood up and made her way out of her room, heading down the hall towards Robin's.

oooooooooooooooooooooo

"Robin!" Raven gently tapped on her leader's door three times. Silence answered her call. She sighed exasperated. Typical of him to leave without telling her.

"Robin?" She rapped the door loudly this time. Violet eyes glared accusingly at the silver door, as though it was it that had caused Robin's departure. She crossed her arms, staring down the hall, and considered where he could have possibly gone. The most obvious choice was out in the city, patrolling, but she wasn't sure he'd leave her and Cyborg without telling them where he was going first, in case they found something. Perhaps the training room?

Raven turned from the door and started down the hall toward the nearest elevator. If he wasn't in the training room then she was going to begin to get annoyed, and then she'd have to stop and meditate, prolonging her finding of him even longer. _Stupid…_

Raven hadn't walked two steps when she heard a muffled gasping sound. He cape snapped as she whirled around, straining her ears to pinpoint the noise's location. It sounded like it'd come from Robin's room….

"Robin?" she called, narrowing her eyes at the door. Was he in there? Taking a step forward she lifted her hand toward the door.

"Azereth, metrion, zinthos" she murmured quietly, closing her eyes. She prodded the door and quickly found her way into the lock. Glancing around at the complicated machinery that operated the door she found the bolt and clicked it back. Her physical ears heard the door slide open.

Opening her eyes she walked forward and into the room. She was nearly blinded by the transition of the dark hall outside. The ceiling light was turned on, as well as his desk lamp and reading light near his bed. The heavy curtains were drawn across his window and he'd pushed his desk chair in front of it. Robin himself sat in the corner of his room farthest from the window holding a picture to his chest. His eyes were wide and unblinking. They held a glazed quality that reminded her of a fever-induced patient. _Oh no… _She hastened her way over to him and laid her hand on his forehead. He didn't seem to notice her presence but Raven was immediately relieved to find his head normal temperature. He didn't have the Red disease… but why was he acting like this?

"Robin?" she gently prodded. She felt her emotional barriers waver as she stared at him. Something was wrong… was he… scared? She gently pulled the picture away from his chest until she could see what it was. He had a death-grip on the frame and his fingers were near completely white. The picture depicted an image of him, a white-haired kind looking man in a gray suit, and a tall, well-muscled man she recognized as Bruce Wayne from Gothem City. She let go of the picture and Robin snapped it back to its former position against his chest. He gently rocked back and forth once and made that same gasping scared noise she'd heard outside in the hall.

She paused a moment to check her emotions and then took him by the arm. She slowly lifted him to his feet without any resistance. He continued to cling the picture to him and began blinking rapidly. His eyes focused on her and he looked puzzled for a moment.

"Robin?" raven said quickly. He continued to look puzzled at her and then glanced down at the picture he was holding. His eyes widened and then looked back up at her. Raven didn't want to stick around any longer, she needed to get him to the medical bay and have Cyborg look at him. She was still nervous about the disease or, if it wasn't that, whatever it was that was causing his behavior. He opened his mouth as if to say something but Raven cut him off.

"Robin I think you're sick. We need to get you to the medical bay ok?" He stared at her uncomprehending. Raven gently tugged on his arm and he took a step with her in the direction of the door. However, the second he glanced through the opening leading into the dark hall he near panicked, throwing Raven from his arm and backing away quickly. He rammed his back into the back wall of his room with a grunting noise and slid down it looking terrified.

"What's wrong?" Raven said confused, looking out the door. She glanced back at him and then it clicked. Every available light was turned on in his room. His curtain was closed against the night. Duh… he was afraid of the dark. _That doesn't make any sense…_ she thought,_ he's never been afraid before._ She looked at him and then closed her eyes. She felt herself slide out of the room and down along the wall. She came to the light switch and snapped it on. Back in Robin's room light poured into his already well-lit room from the open door. Raven opened her eyes and walked back over to Robin.

"There, see? All lit up now. Nothings dark." She knelt down and slung one of his arms around her shoulders. She stood up, forcing him with her. He had that puzzled look back on his face again.

"R-raven?" He said. His voice was quiet and distant, his eyes unfocused. "What… where are we?"

"We're in your room." She said dryly. She flinched inwardly. Great, be emotionless with the terrified boy. She made herself take a kind tone of voice. "We need to get to the medical bay. I think you're sick."

"Medical bay…" His voice distant, as though he weren't all there. Raven took a step toward the door and he shuffled forward with her. _There we go_. They slowly made their way out into the hall and started off down it, toward the stairway. The nearest elevator had a glass wall that looked out into the harbor and Raven didn't want to subject Robin to the night in his current condition. Every time they began to come up to another corridor Raven would pause and flip on the switch telekinetically. Robin kept shaking his head as though trying to clear it of something. Finally the two reached the main common room.

"Cyborg!" Raven called out dragging Robin inside. Cyborg was staring intently at something on the monitor and didn't hear her call the first time. Exasperated she called out again.

"CYBORG!" Cyborg yelped surprised and spun around in his swivel chair.

"What, man?" he said sounding annoyed for getting yelled at. His eyes landed on Robin and his expression melted to that of concern. He stood from his chair.

"What happened?" he said sharply. Robin was fading fast, exhausted, and kept putting more and more of his weight on Raven who was beginning to sag.

"I dunno," Raven said. "I think we need to get him to the medical bay. He isn't acting right. He's afraid of the dark." Cyborg stared at her not quite comprehending what she'd said.

"He's scared of the… dark?" he asked unsure.

"_Yes_," Raven said irritated. Could he not see she was about ready to collapse under Robin's weight? Her tone seemed to snap Cyborg into action and he hurried over to her, lifting Robin from her shoulders with an ease that only his super-strength could provide.

"Ok… let's get him down there then." He said heading off in the direction of the medical bay. Robin's eyes were fluttering and before they'd left the room he'd closed them, passed out in Cyborg's arms.

ooooooooooooooooooo

"TRISICLOPLOTS! Look out mamn you're not gonna wanna be touchin' that one they spit poison! OH THE RAPTOR ATE THE LITTLE BOY! Look out! It _ate_ him!" somewhere down the street the Dinosaur-man continued to wail out his concern of the oncoming dinosaurs. Beast Boy was patrolling the far western streets of Jump City and had been listening to the Dinosaur-man screaming for the last 20 minutes or so. He wanted to find him and send him to the nearest hospital but he knew there would be no room for him. He was going to receive just as much care in the hospital as he was getting out here on the streets.

The streets were quiet and the pedestrians outside had a radiating woe about them. They stared at the ground as they walked, as though afraid to meet anyone's eyes and contract the red disease, and stepped with a melancholy, weary air. Being among these people who had witnessed more death in the last couple weeks in their city then anyone should ever have to in an entire lifetime sucked the good airs out of Beast Boy and left him feeling dreary and depressed. Why was he out here patrolling? There was nothing he could do for these people. With the way things were going Jump City was doomed for extinction in the next couple weeks, and the citizens would lie rotting in its walls for eternity, as no sane person would enter the perimeter and risk contracting the disease to give the people of the city proper burials.

Sighing, Beast Boy shifted into his bloodhound shape. The stench radiating from the very pavement of the city was easier to deal with in this form. Though the smell was much more strong and easier to pick apart from the other smells of the city, dogs don't find scents disgusting, but merely fascinating. However the human aspect of Beast Boy's mind was still disgusted with the sheer amount of the stench of death radiating from the city.

He let out a whine and put back his ears, now smelling and hearing the Dinosaur-man much clearer. He had a queer tangy wet stench to him that Beast Boy recognized as that of a delusional man under the influences of the influenza virus. Beast Boy wearily started trotting again down the street, resuming his patrol.

"REX! IT'S THE T'RANASOUROUS oh god oh god oh god…" Beast Boy whined again. The Dinosaur-man was starting to get to him. He wished he would stop.

"Birdy raptors yessir they slash'ya with their talons an-" suddenly the Dinosaur-man was cut short. Beast Boy paused and cocked his floppy ears forward, wondering what had put such an abrupt end to the man's rant. He resumed trotting and rounded a corner of the street. The Dinosaur-man had been sounding close and Beast Boy was sure he was just on this street when he stopped ranting.

Beast Boy glanced around looking for a delusional looking man, but saw no one that he'd expect to be under the virus. The people on the street continued their silent walking as if nothing strange had been happening just moments before. Or were these people used to other people screaming about dinosaurs for half an hour? He sneezed irritated and put his nose to the ground, taking a big whiff. He could smell the man but something was wrong with the stench now. Something different was replacing it. Something like the scent of a corpse.

Beast Boy picked up his pace now. Had someone killed the man? Someone sick of his rants, willing to put him out of his misery? He followed the stench around a corner into a long stretch of alleyway. He saw a mound piled in the middle of it like a sack of potatoes and started toward it. He realized it was the Dinosaur-man when he stepped in the pool of blood streaming from the body. He quickly lifted his paw and stepped back. So someone had stabbed the poor man then…. Beast Boy shifted back to his human shape and stepped lightly around the pool of blood toward the man. He knelt down and shook him gently. Beast Boy knew the man was already dead. He could smell it before he'd transformed back. But he hated that this man had died delusional, unable to recall anything about his life in the last few moments of it.

"He's dead," came a cheery voice from the shadows. "You can tell from the way his body's got that wilted look you know? I figure that's from the lack of blood flow but I never pretend to be a doctor with this kind'a stuff." Beast Boy whirled around surprised.

"Who is that?" he said uneasily, striving to see where the man was hiding. He felt an odd surge of helplessness against this person and didn't want to be caught off-guard. "Show yourself."

A terrible laughing erupted, surrounding Beast Boy with a menacing presence. His heart began pounding. Where was it coming from? The laughter seemed to be coming from all around him at once. He spun around once more and grazed through the shadows but again could find no source of the laughter. He even shifted his eyes to an owl's and used his night vision to pierce through the darkness but still… he could find no one. The laughter abruptly stopped.

"Do you know… if I were you I'd probably be getting back to your Tower soon. I believe you'll be wanting a leader when the time comes, and as of now little Robin isn't much of a substantial candidate." His voice was calm and quiet, but the man still sounded immensely amused. Beast Boy felt a fluttering in his stomach and spun around once again. The Man in Black stood right there feet from him. As though he'd been standing there the whole time. He was smiling.

"What did you do?" Beast Boy's eyes widened. Robin not a substantial candidate… what did he mean? "What did you do to him!" The Man in Black gave a warm smile that sent shivers up Beast Boy's spine.

"Well little Beast Boy… I'd tell you but I don't want to ruin the surprise." He burst into a fit of laughter again. Beast Boy narrowed his eyes and felt inside of him for that worn, rarely used trigger that called forth his werebeast. This man needed to be stopped. Beast Boy felt that this man, whoever he was, had a direct effect on what was happening to Jump City, however illogical that seemed.

He felt the familiar painful twinge he got whenever he transformed manually into his beast form. His teeth elongated and his muscles swelled over rapidly growing and rearranging bones. He heard his beast scream its rage and turned to face the Man in Black. With a terrifying scream Beast Boy allowed his beast to charge forward lashing out with a huge, iron fist. He felt a moment of bewilderment as the Man stood still, not raising a defense or running from him. His beast however obviously felt nothing was wrong because it continued on with his attack, swinging his immense weight down into the punch, using muscle, momentum, and gravity to strengthen the force of his oncoming blow. Beast Boy struck the man in black and there was a blinding white flash. Beast Boy slammed back into the wall behind him, transformed back into his regular body. He slid to the ground and moaned, fighting back the blackness that was swelling into his mind threatening unconsciousness. Faintly he heard the Man in Black laughing.

"Beastie should learn to control his temper or he's going to lose his playtime privileges." The Man said smiling down at Beast Boy's limp form. He squatted down next to him and lifted his chin, forcing him to look into his face. Beast Boy's eyes glazed over at the movement of his head and then refocused. He was terribly confused as to how the Man had managed to reverse his transformation.

"Go back to your Tower Beasty. Tell your little Robin that he can't defeat me," his eyes glinted and his smile took on a sadistic quality. "Tell him- Tell him that I am the thing that keeps him up at night. That I am the evil that haunts every dark corner of his mind."

Beast Boy was fading quickly. The last thing he saw was the smiling face of the Man in Black, and then everything went black.


	5. Chapter 4

"I'm totally fine!" Robin called to Cyborg across the room, who was busy monitoring him on a screen.

"There's nothing wrong with me… seriously! I'm ok!" He sat irritated and feeling ignored on the medical bed, hooked up to monitors and equipment and not particularly happy about it. He wasn't sure what had taken place the night before as Cyborg seemed unwilling to discuss it and Raven had scampered off somewhere, but whatever it was he felt that both of them were overreacting.

Cyborg made a clicking sound with his tongue concentrating on the monitors and then turned to face Robin. A weary look passed over his face and he began making his way across the room. He stopped in front of Robin looking as though he wanted to say something but wasn't quite sure how to begin.

"Robin… Last night you had a fugue," he said. Robin stared at him uneasy. A fugue? He supposed that would explain the odd veil blocking his memories but he'd never experienced any mental disorders such as a fugue before. Of course he'd been known to overstress but… not to the point of that kind of mental stress. It didn't seem possible.

"A fugue," he said unbelieving. Cyborg gave him a worried look.

"You're not… over-working yourself over anything lately are you?" he asked feeling stupid. He knew he was. There was a plague ravishing their city just outside the Tower. He paused, considering another option.

"Anything or… anyone? Not thinking about Slade again, are you?" Robin gave a tiny flinch that Cyborg nearly missed. Then he threw Cyborg a trifle irritated look.

"I'm not obsessing over him ok? He's long dead now." Unsure. Cyborg thought he sounded unsure.

"Fine man, just the last time you were thinking about him you went and touched that mask and had all those hallucinations and now you're having fugues-" he started. Robin cut him off.

"It's only been one occasion and how can you even be _entirely_ sure it was a fugue?" he snapped. Looking a bit guilty for his outburst he added "and besides I'm sure this is just a one occasion thing." Though he denied it, Robin felt a sickening fear growing inside him. He'd been trying to remember what had taken place from the moment he stepped outside to waking up hooked up in the medical bay but it was a total blank. Like no time had passed between the two occasions. What if he experienced these blackouts again during the middle of a battle? What if he managed to put himself, or one of his teammates in harm's way in one of his comatose states? He couldn't afford to suffer mental illnesses. Especially not now with his city in the ravished state it was in.

Suddenly the door slammed open. A disheveled Starfire streaked into the room and flung herself onto Robin. Starfire was shrieking to know if he was all right and Robin was yelling in surprise and the two tumbled over backwards off the bed. Cyborg stood by smirking, silently thanked whatever being had caused him to hook Robin up to the long, looser cables instead of the short ones, as if he hadn't, Robin would have been ripped from his hook-ups.

"ROBIN! Are you ok? I had just returned from the patrolling of the city and I'd but walked in the door when Friend Raven said you were in the rooms of medical treatment and I thought you'd suffered some sort of ailment…" Starfire rushed out her explanation scanning Robin for any physical damage. She faded off looking puzzled when she failed to find any bandages or casts upon his person.

"Friend Robin, you are sick yes?" she said looking into his eyes for explanation.

"He had a fugue Star," Cyborg explained. Upon seeing her confusion he embellished. "That's like… well it's a pathological amnesiac condition when someone is apparently conscious of their actions but has no recollection of them after returning to a normal state and…" he paused seeing Star's deepened look of confusion and attempted to rephrase. "Well it's this condition, usually resulting from severe mental stress, when you…" he stopped and looked helpless to Robin. "Dude! _You_ explain!" He said, walking off towards the monitors. Robin looked at Starfire and sighed. She looked deeply worried and confused. It would probably be better for him to just stretch the truth a bit so she wouldn't over think anything and stress where no stress was needed….

"A fugue is… it's a bit like sleepwalking Star, except it happens when you're not sleeping." He told her. She looked surprised.

"But why are you sleepwalking without the sleeping, friend Robin? Is everything ok?" she asked concerned.

"Yea Star, I'm fine," he said smiling. He lifted one hand and scratched the back of his spiky hair.

"Everything's fine."

ooooooooooooooooo

"Gaa, my head…" Beast Boy moaned reaching his purple-gloved hand for his dark-green hair. He fingered it gingerly and felt the crusty flakes of dried blood. Great. He groaned and managed to push himself up to a sitting position. Dude, that was definitely not cool. Whoever that man was, he'd slammed him back into his human shape like nothing. Beast Boy wasn't even sure he'd had to do anything; he'd just let himself come into contact with him and then _wham_.

He closed his eyes trying to remember the Man's face. His mind was slow and groggy, like the morning fog that often swamped the city. Eventually he managed to recall the face of the Man in Black and shivered. He didn't want to see him again until he had the team with him. And even if he was with them he had no particular desire to face him. However, with a mental image fresh in his mind he could pass it on to Raven, and the team would have a better chance of hunting him down. He'd need to remember.

He slowly placed his hand on the wall behind him and pushed himself up off the ground. The body of the Dinosaur-man still lay where he'd last seen it, the pool of blood long dried and cool. He considered moving the body and burying it himself. No one would have time to do so otherwise. He'd noticed trucks lately that reeked of corpses and had a feeling that the bodies of the victims of the plague were being dumped somewhere, probably in a trench. Given enough time the Dinosaur-man would be found and picked up. He sighed malcontent. The gash on his head probably needed much more urgent care then this guy would ever need again.

He took a few stumbling steps forward and then managed to pull himself together, forcing the grogginess clouding his mind to subside. He slowly shuffled out of the alleyway and made his way back up the street. He couldn't fly in this state even if he transformed to a bird. He'd have to walk back to the Tower. He put one hand to the gash on his head. It was a long walk home.

oooooooooooooooo

Raven sat alone in her room, staring out the window towards the distant horizon. Something was severely, and horribly wrong. No matter how concentrated a mental state she forced herself into, no matter how deep she delved into herself during meditation, her emotions were running turmoil. For some reason her barriers were weakened, had been weakening ever since she'd seen the Man in Black with her mind's eye. She'd been trying desperately to get her powers under control for the last couple hours, but nevertheless the floor of her room was littered with the fragments of her exploded possessions. She hadn't thought anything was wrong when her emotions had wavered as she'd helped Robin, but as the night wore on and on she hadn't been able to seize back control, and whatever the cause was, it seemed to be strengthening.

Crossing her knees in her standard meditation position, Raven closed her eyes and began calming her breath, slowing it and controlling it to a slow, deep rhythm. She attempted to blank her mind, opening her inner eye within her mind in hopes of finding what was wrong with her. This was so foolish. If she was able to control her emotions she could be helping to locate that man she'd touched with her mind earlier, or tending to Robin, or helping Star and Beast Boy patrol, but she couldn't because despite the years of careful control and discipline she was helpless to her emotions. While she sat here completely useless people out in the city were in need of assistance. Dying innocent deaths, crying for help, and all she could do was meditate because she didn't have control of her own powers. _CRACK!_ Raven's eyes flipped open in surprise. She looked across the room to find her dresser split in two pieces. Wood splinters littered the floor and a few scant pieces of clothing tumbled forth like a fabric waterfall. Oops…. She sighed and closed her eyes. Time to try this again.

It seemed like but minutes had passed when she heard a loud, insistent knocking on the door. She slowly cracked open her eyes unwilling to snap out of her trance that she'd felt had begun well, but the knocking persisted in an urgent manner. She opened her eyes wider and slid open the door with telekinesis. Beast Boy stood outside looking frightened, on the verge of panic.

"Raven-" he gasped. "You need to- I don't know what happened I just… it was like this when I got here and I… I…" He cut himself off biting his lip. Raven stared at him waiting for him to continue but he looked terribly frightened and after a few seconds she spared him and got up from her seat on the bed.

"Show me what's wrong Beast Boy." She said in a calm, smooth voice. She hoped she'd be able to keep her emotions controlled for the amount of time it took her to take care of whatever Beast Boy needed. As she looked on he attempted to say something more but couldn't seem to get any words out. He stood helpless for a moment and then turned and raced from the spot. Raven assumed he was leading her to whatever it was he needed her to see and hurriedly levitated after him.

He bounded down a flight of stairs and through dark narrow corridors before he reached the main entrance room of the Tower, which contained two huge front doors. Raven stopped dead, mid-flight. Dark splotches of blood smeared across the floor and splattered the wall. One door of the Tower hung from its hinges and the other seemed to be completely splintered, reduced to a pile of wood chips and steel shavings scattered throughout the room. The cold air swept in from outside and chilled her heated skin. In the center of the room resting in a pool of blood was a massacred body. Rivulets of blood seeped from lacerations and cuts across his legs and arms and his right leg bent at an odd angle. The light from outside shadowed his caved in sternum and ribs, hinting at a completely crushed chest. Pieces of his scalp hung from his skull like ribbons and glazed, terrorized eyes stared out from a thin, black mask.

Raven's eyes widened in horror. She'd done this. She felt it, she _knew _it. This was the result of one of her emotional slips. _Oh god oh god_. She'd tortured him to death. She'd killed her leader, her best friend, her brother. She'd killed Robin.

"Oh god" she cried sick to her stomach. She stumbled backwards averting her eyes from the damage she'd wrought, her mind roaring. "I didn't mean to," she gasped suddenly finding it hard to get air to her lungs. Her voice cracked and a black light swept its way up the stairs, peeling the paint off the banister. Beast Boy was staring at her with a dawning expression, which began to melt into that of horror and then finally rage.

"You- you did this?" He asked staring at her. Raven's eyes had moved back to the still body on the floor. She couldn't move. She couldn't comprehend what she'd done. Her heart was pounding in her chest but it felt like it'd stopped entirely. _Robin…._

"Raven. You-" He shook his head not understanding. "How- how could you do this? You killed him. You killed him didn't you?" he said mortified. Raven turned towards him. His voice sounded wrong. He was skulking forward, his shoulders shifting upward, hunching up into two massive muscular shoulders. His legs shortened and his face extended into the massive jaws of a hyena. He began laughing in his shrill hyena bark, chilling Raven to the bone. His jaw opened flashing white, terrifyingly sharp teeth.

"YOU KILLED HIM" He boomed in a heinous, inhuman voice. Raven stared aghast. Beast Boy couldn't talk in his animal forms…. The hyena slunk forward, shifty as his own shadow and started to giggle again.

"ARE YOU HALLUCINATING?" he asked in his wretched voice.

"W-what?" Raven stuttered. Her mind felt numb and groggy and she was suddenly all too aware of the bloody figure just past the hyena's shoulder. Beast Boy bared his teeth fiercely and lowered his head as if to strike out with his muscular maw.

The hyena's eyes flashed a malevolent girth as he growled "ARE YOU-"

"-hallucinating?" Cyborg repeated alarmed from the doorway of Raven's room. Raven gasped as reality slammed in around her and she fell forward in a dead faint.

ooooooooooooooooo

The little boy grinned fiercely. Everything was going just as his master had told him it would, and soon he would relish in a city brought to its knees under the iron-fists of his dreaded master.

The little boy had sandy hair, strikingly blue eyes and fair, pale skin. He was dressed in thick, leather black boots, light black slacks and a skin tight long-sleeve shirt; also black. He was the son of a morally righteous family and had grown up surrounded with love, as well as stern discipline. He was neither a brat, nor an over eccentric child and knew when it was most appropriate to cease actions others found displeasing. All in all he was a good kid. The only problem was, he was dead.

The little boy was a victim of the Man in Black's plague, and had died several weeks before. He crouched in the shadows of his tree house, looking down through the trapdoor to the sidewalk below that wound right next to the base of the tree. He still wasn't used to not having a need to draw in air and forcefully exhaled a breath full every couple minutes. The Man in Black was coming back for him tonight. He'd told him he had orders for him, because he was the first the Man in Black had brought back, and he was most special to him. The little boy grinned entirely unaware of his doing so. Yes. _He _was the Man in Black's first. _He_ was the favorite.

The little boy reached into his pocket and drew out a tiny, brand new silver cigarette lighter that he'd stolen from the little drugstore down the street from the house he'd called home when we was alive. He flipped the lid open and flicked the lighter, which staid cold and unlit. He frowned and flicked it again but it resumed its unlit stature. Once more the little boy flicked the lighter with a tiny growl and a spark of light split into existence. The little boy gave another fierce grin. His time was coming. His master's time was coming. They had only to wait.

The little boy waited clear through the rest of the afternoon and well into the night before he heard a quiet shuffling of ancient boots strolling up the sidewalk. He leapt excitedly from his perch in the tree house. His legs slammed down and he felt the grass indent deeply into the soil, but he felt no pain. The Man in Black stood before him grinning softly.

"Good evening James," He said. "Are you ready for your mission?"

The little boy smiled sheepishly and gave a deep bow, sticking his foot out and spreading his arms. "I've been ready my entire life Master, as well as death," he cried. The Man in Black nodded approvingly.

"Good. Now- you are to go to the Tower of the Teen Titans. My new associate has need of a boy called Robin. Don't look so nervous my child, they cannot harm a boy already dead." The Man in Black grinned at the boy, and the boy grinned back. "Bring me the boy, James, and I'll reward you above all others."

The little boy, known as James Ackerman in a former life, smiled up at the Man in Black fondly. His eyes reflected a deep gleam that had nothing to do with the streetlights, or moonlight, or starlight, but came from a much deeper source of a child's innocent love.

ooooooooooooooooo

Cyborg carried the limp form of Raven carefully down the hallway towards the medical bay. He'd been walking to her room to tell her that he was keeping a close watch on their leader but had let him go about his business. When he'd came upon her door however he'd heard her yelling inside and upon opening the door she'd seemed to be under some sort of terrifying trance. Cyborg sighed. First Robin, now Raven… were they all going to end up in states of mental trauma soon?

He entered the medical treatment rooms and laid Raven down on one of the beds. She groaned and he felt a static pop slice up his arm. He looked down surprised at the surge and saw his arm glowing a dark black. His blood chilled. Raven had hold of his arm with her unconscious mind. If she wasn't aware of her surroundings then- the black light winked out. Cyborg gave a heavy sigh of relief. He leaned over her and gently called "Raven!" patting her on the cheek a bit. She groaned and slit one violet eye open. Cyborg smiled down at her.

"Hey man, ya' gave me a scare back there." He told her dryly in an attempt to lighten the mood. She stared up at him with drooping eyelids, and her eyes slowly slid closed. He stood back up and considered hooking her up to the medical equipment when she suddenly slammed her eyes open and sat up with a panicked, lightning speed.

"ROBIN" she shrieked wildly.

"Hey, hey, its fine Ray. Robin's fine." Cyborg soothed, placing his hands on her shoulders. Raven stared at him insure. She'd seen him. She'd seen what she'd done to him.

"Where is he?" she asked, eyes wide. Cyborg shrugged and looked helpless.

"I'm not sure," he said. "I let him out of the bay a couple hours ago." Raven stared at him. Was he really claiming Robin to be fine when he didn't know where he was? She pushed against his arms but he gently pushed her back.

"You were hallucinating Raven. Whatever you saw… it wasn't real man. I need to give you medical treatment." He explained. Raven looked entirely dissatisfied with his explanation, but allowed herself to be pushed back against her pillows. Cyborg hooked her up to a few pieces of medical equipment and began monitoring her, checking for any irrational neurological symptoms and then moving on to other areas.

40 minutes later he made his way up wearily the stairs of the medical bay towards the Tower's first floor main hallway. He wasn't exhausted because of Raven, but rather the combined hours of checking up on both Raven and Robin. He was making his way up towards the common room where he'd left his communicator next to the computer systems in order to contact Robin and explain to him Raven's situation.

Cyborg turned the corner and paused. He thought he'd heard a groaning sound…. He glanced back around the corner and then down the hallway but found nothing. Shrugging he resumed his pace for a bit but then stopped. There it was again. Cyborg narrowed his eyes and slipped his heat sensor lens over his mechanical eye. The walls lining the hall were cool and blue. He walked a while looking down the branching hallways and finally came to a heaped, bright red and orange form in the middle of an eastbound hallway. He slid his heat lens back and noticed spout of green hair and a deep purple costume. _Beast Boy… dude not you too. _

Cyborg rushed forward and kneeled down next to the green teen, reaching forward and gently shaking his shoulder.

"Beast Boy?" he prodded. Beast Boy groaned and opened one eye, rolling it up to stare at Cyborg. Cyborg hadn't noticed on first appearance but his hair was matted with a thick gel of blood. He quickly slid Beast Boy into his arms and ran back to the medical bay cursing whatever force kept bringing harm to his team members.

oooooooooooooooooo

Bruce Wayne sat alone in his old chair watching the evening news reports of Jump City. He hoped to catch a glimpse of Robin in action, checking up on him without actually offending his young charge by calling or showing up at his Tower uninvited. While acting like he wanted to know what was going on was "stepping within Robin's boundaries," watching the news was completely legal.

"-ttle girl was finally returned to her mother after being located in a small shack on the outskirts of the city. More at eleven. And now we have a special report on the spreading virus that many have come to term "Captain Red" with George Anderson. George?"

"Thanks Trish…" the news reporter stated. He seemed oddly nervous and his brow gleamed with beads of sweat.

"uh… th- the virus has been spreading throughout the city at a substantial rate now, however- sources claim that it's being contained and… and…" his eyes darted off camera nervously as though watching something.

"And there's nothing to strain yourselves over, the government has all their top scientists working on a cure and doctors have discovered how to prevent the… prevent the symptoms from worsening to a degree of crisis that can be threatening to the life… and…" his eyes were now completely trained off-camera, staring, intently nervous.

"-and it's been stated that the rumors of corpse trenches for the victims of the plague are false. The virus is only at a 5 death rate, hardly threatening. Once again a cure is being formatted and should be ready within the next couple weeks. If you feel any wooziness or… or…" the reporter shuddered slightly, and began to pick up a slight stutter. Symptoms of fear.

"or any other sickness you should report to your doctor immediately, better to be safe then… then…" a tear slid down the face of the reporter and he shuddered violently. He suddenly trained his eyes on the camera and stood up from behind his desk.

"AI GOD!" he shrieked "So many dead! SO MANY! Get out! Get out of the city while you can oh god if you'd seen what I've seen! What we're not allowed to show to you oh god so many dead I swear it save yo-" The reporter, was cut off from a man in military uniform slinging an arm around his neck and dragging him off screen. The camera switched to a disheveled looking Trish, who had a fake smile plastered on her face.

"Sorry about that folks," she said sweetly. "In other news-" Bruce cut her off, flipping the power of the TV. Well that certainly wasn't what he'd expected on the evening press. He stood up from his seat and started making his way to the old piano. It was time to pay his young charge a visit. It'd been nearly a year since he'd seen him anyways… he was overdue.

ooooooooooooooooooo

Beast Boy groaned and slid his right eye open. The huge blurry form of a grinning Cyborg looked down at him.

"Hey man. Get enough beauty sleep? You've been in need of some for a while now…." He said mischievously. Beast Boy attempted to make a retort but his words were oddly sluggish and hard to get out. Cyborg narrowed his eyes in concern.

"Don't try to talk just yet," he put in. "You have a mild concussion." His face slid back into a jester's and he added "What, did you get beat up by that same little girl again? I told you dude, you gotta learn to pick your battles." Beast Boy stared up at him uncertain and confused. His mind was so slow…. Suddenly he remembered.

"R-Robin," he said slowl, making sure to articulate as much as possible. Cyborg glanced down at him.

"He's fine man," he said wondering how Beast Boy knew about Robin's little episode. "I let him out a few hours ago." Beast Boy furrowed his brow in confusion and slowly shook his head. He began speaking slowly.

"N-no… R-obin. I was…walking down the h-hall and… I saw him." He paused to breath deeply. "He came over to help me be… because my head was all funny and… and a boy attacked us." He shuddered slightly. Now it was Cyborg's turn to be confused.

"Attacked you? In the Tower? How the heck did a boy get past my security system without me knowing?" he paused uncertain Beast Boy wasn't hallucinating from the blow he'd received to his head and added "And where was Robin? You were the only one I saw in the hall." He was growing anxious, impatient with Beast Boy's slow explanation.

"He… the little boy wasn't right. Robin kept knocking him down and… and he kept getting back up like nothing h-happened. He… he didn't get out of breath or… or feel any pain or get knocked out. He just took all Robin's blows…." He paused for breath again. "He was just slowing wearing Robin down, h-hitting him every once… in a while and- and finally he knocked Robin down and he kicked him in the head ev-even though… even though Robin should'a beat him way before… and… and he hit me on the head with something and… I don't know what happened to Robin." He finished exhausted.

Cyborg's eyes had been growing steadily widened and he felt a cold lump settle in his stomach. Robin was gone. Robin was gone, and that meant that they were temporarily leaderless in an extremely dire time for Jump City. And he had no idea where to even begin to search for him.

ooooooooooooooooo

_Drip… drip… drip…. _Somewhere nearby water wept into a puddle collected on the floor. Each small, harsh noise broke through the silence and bore into Robin's ears, urging him into a semi-conscious state of mind. The first thing he became aware of was that the steady, melancholy beat of the water matched the throbbing in his head. _Drip… drip… drip…_.

A sharp pain in his right hip was becoming more and more insistent. Lying down… he was lying on his hip on a hard floor. Groaning he shifted his weight and the pain eased off. Where was he? _Drip… drip… drip…. _

Dark, it was dark. _Not the dark_. He yanked his hands forward in an attempt to ward anything hiding in the shadows away, but something held them in place, suspended above his head. A cold fear seized him as he realized that, not only was he enclosed, alone in inky black surroundings, but he couldn't move his hands. He was bound. _Eyes. My eyes are closed_. Duh. Robin flickered his eyelids open and a harsh, unwelcoming light pierced through, dilating his pupils and sending a lancing pain back through his eyes to his head.

"Nnnn…" he groaned turning his head down toward the stone he lay on, away from the offending light, but refusing to close his eyes. He felt an immense relief that he wasn't in complete darkness, but a wisp of his initial terror stayed with him, flickering around his groggy mind. Where was he? And why were his hands tied? _Drip… drip… drip…. _Everything was blurry. The last few hours… days… however long it'd been seemed to be replaced with a thick veil of fog in his memories. Slowly, painstakingly slowly, his eyes adjusted to the light and Robin raised his head to see where he was.

He was in a tiny, bleak cell, built from gray stone blocks. The harsh light that made his head throb at nearly double the pace of the water droplets came from a tiny barred window set in the middle of a thick, wooden door lined with iron. His hands were secured up above his head on a stretch of chain that would allow just enough movement to inch three feet over to the corner of his cell to relieve himself. _Drip… drip… drip…._ He was lying with his back flat against the wall facing the door with his arms at such an awkward position that he had a hard time figuring out why they weren't bothering him as his hip had been, until he realized that they were both completely numb. Nothing was making sense. Why was he locked up in a cell?

_Drip… drip… WAM_. The constant pattering of water was suddenly disrupted by a horrendous banging sound. Why Robin felt it had horrendous qualities he wasn't quite sure, but the sound waves carrying the noise pulsing against his eardrums seemed to breath a malevolence that he felt helpless against. Tensing his muscles Robin fought against the grogginess that still gripped his mind trying to pull himself together in case he'd need to face something soon. He pulled on the chains with his arms and dragged himself to a sitting position. The world blurred out of focus for a moment and his head throbbed painfully. His face screwed up in pain before he dragged control of himself once more. He stared at the door listening intently for the sound again but his cell, and outside his cell, was silent. The dripping water had stopped.

The light entering his cell from the tiny barred window winked out and Robin was plunged into darkness. His stomach instantly tightened in fear and his breathing became ragged and terrified. Eyes widened in hope of seeing some form of something in the dark, Robin pulled his feet inward, bending his knees up to his chest. _Dark. Oh god not the dark._ Something was there. He could feel it's presence. Outside his cell, looking in at him. Something that reeked of evil.

"Who's there?" He called. "H-hello?" the silence bore into his head with as much terrible clarity as the darkness. Then, a long rattling breath reverberated off the walls of his cell. Robin slammed his eyes shut, ashamed of his overwhelming fear, but unable to control it. _Not here not here not here…._ His mind flared red as a light source flickered on from behind his lids.

Slowly Robin cracked one eye open, unable to resist the prospect of some source of light verses the darkness of his closed eyes. Standing feet before him holding a worn, silver lighter was a man dressed entirely in black. He was smiling at him.

"Well hello there, kid-o," the man said flickering his lighter off, plunging them into an instant of darkness, and then flicking the light back on again. Robin stared frozen in place at the man before him. He was tall and pale, providing a strong contrast against his black clothing. His teeth were flashy and white and his eyes were a solid icy gray color. He had a round, amused face and looked as though he smiled often. Robin immediately hated that grin.

"W-who are you? Why… am I here?" Robin asked. He was having trouble putting words together, still slow from the blow to his head, and his voice cracked. The man in black grinned his terrible grin and flicked the light back out. Robin felt his throat tighten and restrained from crying out. The light flicked back on.

"You're here little Robin," the man grinned, "because I want you to be." He flicked the light out again. This time, he didn't flick it back on. Darkness swarmed around Robin and he felt his heartbeat quicken. Then, something struck him in the stomach.

"Oof!" He doubled over, hands still chained above his head. The man in black was laughing somewhere in the cell but Robin couldn't pinpoint it. The sound bounced around off the walls confusing him. A blow to his head. His skull snapped back and slammed against the stone wall with a crack. Robin felt dizzy and sick. A heavy boot slammed down on his foot and he heard a wet snap followed by a searing pain in one of his toes.

"STOP!" Robin cried panicking, still attempting to pinpoint the steadily growing laughter. A cold fist slammed his right eye and his head slammed back against the wall again with a pained yelp.

Suddenly the light flicked on again. The man in black stood exactly where he'd stood before, with the exact same smile plastered on his face.

"I know something you don't know," he said in a light singsong voice. Robin gasped for breat. He pulled his arms down as far as he could stretch them, providing scant cover to his head. He squinted against the light and looked up to the man in black. He wished the man had left his head alone… he was having enough trouble thinking as it was.

"Who a-are you? Why are you do- doing this?" He gasped. He was disgusted to hear his voice tiny and frightened. He was acting like a child. The man in black cocked his head and squatted down so that his eyes were level with Robin's.

"Why go through the long process of introductions when I could just have you speak with someone you're already well acquainted with?" He asked. The tiny flame of his lighter reflected and danced in his eyes. Robin slid his body away from him.

"Who…?" he demanded weakly. The man in black grinned.

"An old friend of yours. I believe you've been expecting him for quite some time now. I thought we'd enjoy ourselves with a little reunion and then have ourselves a bang-up party you know? I haven't had one of those in such a long time…" He flicked the lighter off and on. Robin had begun to develop a queasy feeling in the pit of his stomach. There was no possible way… he most certainly wasn't talking about….

The man in black stood up and looked down at Robin. He grinned and turned towards the door, pulling out a small, ancient looking silver key. He slid it into the door and it swung open silently. He stepped out of the cell, taking the lighter with him, leaving Robin in a temporary state of darkness and unease. The light returned and Robin looked up. His heart nearly back flipped. His throat constricted so tightly he couldn't breath. His blood started pounding through his veins so quickly he thought he might explode. His face drained to a pale white and his head began throbbing painfully again.

"Hello Robin," Slade greeted.

The throbbing in Robin's head became a roar and he bent forward and retched, stretching against his chained arms. His mind was filling back up with that misty veil and his eyes were glazing over. He hunched forward against his bindings and knew no more.


	6. Chapter 5

Head officer Kelly made his way down the corridors of HQ. The halls rang with silence and echoed with the eerie quiet of a morgue, only interrupted by the occasional cough from Kelly himself. Near all his officers were gone. Those that had remained loyal to him in the end were dead, killed from an outbreak of the influenza in the HQ, their bodies yet to be removed strewn across the various rooms in disarray. But most had deserted him, terrified of contracting the disease through the work their jobs demanded. The troops that had been stationed here were gone. The police force wasn't in much better condition. And, what he feared the most, the Teen Titans hadn't been spotted in days. The city's saviors had seemingly abandoned Jump City.

Kelly made his way down a narrow flight of stairs and sidestepped a corpse at the bottom. He kneeled down and lifted the dead person's head to see if it was still recognizable. The face was distorted from lying against the floor and the lack of blood flow, and the eyes had collapsed inward as the body had begun its slow decay. However Kelly managed to recognize the face as private James.

Kelly gently flipped the corpse over, pulled out his hankercheif from his right, back pocket and laid it over the soldier's face. He patted James on the shoulder and left him there, continuing on deeper into the corridors beneath HQ. He slipped through a partly blocked door and gagged as a wet stench of death drifted past his nose. He looked around to locate the source but found no bodies. He shrugged the stench off.

Eventually Kelly came to a hall marked for bio facilities, where his finest scientists had been researching the virus. They now lay strewn across the labs, finally succumbed to the disease. Officer Kelly made his way past a lab table with microscopes and, he was sick to his stomach to see, cracked petri dishes of samples of the virus.

Kelly glanced around the room. Were he able to see the virus, would it be squirming around the walls surrounding him? Was he breathing it in, coating his lungs with it as he stood quiet and still? Kelly sighed. It didn't matter. He'd already been infected for a little over a week now.

Drawing his gun, Kelly sat down next to one of the dead scientists leaning against the wall. The scientist's lips were stretched back in early stages of decomposition, causing a fierce, inhumane grin to cross his face. He reeked of death but Kelly didn't mind that much. He had failed his job. His city was becoming a City of Ruin, just like in that Bruce Springsteen song. They would mark it as a bio-hazardous area and the corpses of his fellow privates and soldiers and citizens would rot, left to whatever fate their unprotected corpses were dealt. He smiled gently at the scientist sitting next to him who had remained loyal until death. One of the few that had had faith in his ability to set things right.

He turned back and felt a calm sereneness encompass his body. He felt a great weight lifted from his shoulders as he gave up his responsibility for the protection of Jump City. He had failed. It was someone else's turn to take up the charge. Closing his eyes, Kelly brought the gun to his head and placed the barrel in his mouth. He slowly pulled the trigger and the labs echoed and reverberated with the sound of head officer Kelly's death.

oooooooooooooooooo

Minutes after Beast Boy had told him of Robin's strange assailer he'd passed out and Cyborg had had the choice of tending to him and Raven or figuring out where Robin could have been hauled off to. He'd chosen the most immediate problems. After stabilizing Beast Boy and checking on Raven, he was just heading out the door back toward his original destination, the main control room, when Raven groaned and slowly sat up in her bed. Cyborg spun around mid-stride and headed over to her bedside.

"Hey," he started gently. "How you feelin'?" Raven stared at him, her eyes glazed over with a fine mist.

"You're suffering from some sort of post-mental trauma." Cyborg told her wearily, more attempting small talk then the discussion that he desperately needed to have with her. "I'm not sure I'll be able to diagnose it if we can't figure out the cause."

"Where's Robin?" Raven's deep-purple eyes rolled, staring intently into Cyborg's, making him twitchy and nervous. It was as if her gaze were grazing the outskirts of his soul, preventing him from giving her any vague answers.

"I'm not sure," he told her guiltily. "But you're not gonna be any help to anyone if we don't figure out what's causing your hallucinations," he pointed out. Raven glared at him.

"I'm fine," she said monotonously. "Just stressed out. Just… just tired is all. I'll be fine soon enough." Cyborg stared at her unbelievingly.

"Dude are you kidding! I saw your room, it resembles no-man's land! Are you trying to tell me that's _not_ your handy work?" Raven's glare hardened.

"We have more pressing matters to attend to," she told him coldly. "We can't beat whatever's out there without a leader…" she trailed off as her eyes laid on Beast Boy. They snapped back anxious. "What happened to him?"

Cyborg considered his options. He didn't want to stress her out any more than was necessary but he knew keeping her out of the loop was a very bad idea. He sighed and decided on the truth.

"He got hit in the head. Some… thing… got in the Tower. It took Robin."

The reaction that overtook Raven was completely unexpected. For a moment she simply stared at Cyborg unmoving, seemingly uncomprehending. But then, after a few seconds her eyes widened in panic and flashed white. Her lips moved in unspoken words, terrified. _What?_ Cyborg reached toward her to calm her and that static jolt wound its way up his arm again. His breath catching in his throat, he stopped dead, his mechanical arm glowing a dark light.

"R-Raven…" He said nervously. The light in Raven's eyes dimmed down to a milky glaze and a computer monitoring her blood pressure cracked open pouring out black light as it fell to the floor.

"Raven calm down!" Cyborg yelled continuing to stand unmoving. Raven's power seeped out, slowly enveloping the room until both she and Cyborg were encased in her dark light.

"He has him," she said in a pitch of voice lower than usual. "He has him and he wants me. I can feel him. He's coursing through me, in my blood." She sighed tiredly and her head lolled limply on her neck. "It tastes like chalk," she said distastefully. Cyborg was sweating profusely, on the verge of panic.

"Raven-" he started. "Whatever's wrong, we can fix it. Whatever it is we'll find the problem. We can make it better man, I swear, man..." The glowing in Raven's eyes vanished and she stared out at him with her clear violet eyes.

From Raven's entity spoke a deep, ancient voice that chilled Cyborg's blood. "He wont let you," she boomed. The room trembled and her power over their surroundings vanished.

"He wont let you. He wont let you. He wont let you. He wont let you…."

Cyborg dashed forward, his arm released from Raven's hold and managed to grab hold of her shoulders just as she fell forward, passed out once again in a dead faint.

Cyborg was finally making his way up to the main control room to find his communicator. When he'd left Raven had been in a deep unconscious state, her pulse slow but steady resembling a coma patient and he was terribly nervous. Not just from Raven's second episode or from Beast Boy's story, but from an unknown assailment, buried deep within the pits of his stomach resting uneasy and uncomfortable. When he reached the room and located his communicator next to the monitor he'd been studying before Raven had brought Robin to him, it was only the years of stress he'd undergone and been forced to deal with in the constancy of crime fighting that kept his hands from trembling. He picked the communicator up and snapped it on, transmitting out a signal to Robin. The screen virred on and portrayed a snowy, static white. Troubled, Cyborg switched his communicator off and snapped it to his belt.

The Tower was strangely devoid of character that night, quiet and silent. Robin was gone, Raven and Beast Boy were hospitalized and though he had no idea where Starfire was, she wasn't in the Tower. He was alone.

Stepping lightly as he returned, afraid to send too loud of echoes down the halls, Cyborg considered the peril the City was spiraling into. The amount of deaths from the virus was stretching higher each day. The amount of delusional people in such a concentrated area was bound to create chaos sometime and with the team in the condition it was in, Cyborg was afraid they weren't going to be much help to any innocents any time soon. And there was also this Man in Black to consider.

As Cyborg strode into the med bay he saw Beast Boy's eyes were open and he was blinking furiously, as though striving to focus on something. Cyborg walked over to him and checked his monitors.

"How are you feeling," he asked. Beast Boy stared up at him unblinking.

"I saw him," he said.

"Who?" Cyborg asked peering at Beast Boy's bandages.

"I saw that dude that Robin wanted. The Man in Black." Cyborg froze. He turned to Beast Boy, giving him his full attention.

"Dude… you saw him?" he asked nervous but eager.

"Yea… he made me… he did something funny," Beast Boy said puzzled. "He made me turn back to human. Like he reversed my transformation." Cyborg furrowed his brow in puzzlement.

"How'd he do that?" He asked. Beast Boy blinked hard trying to remember.

"He… Well I turned into my werebeast form and was totally kicking his butt," He began sheepishly grinning. "And then he pulled with the mumbo jumbo, completely unfair, and I was just givin' him this crushing blow you know I was like POW! And then there was this flash and BAM!… I- kinda slammed back into the wall…" he finished unenthused.

"You slammed back into the wall?" Cyborg asked confused. "Where you hurt?"

"Well you know," Beast Boy said indignantly, "As hurt as a tough beastly man such as myself _can_ be… I mean just a little bump on my head is all I was totally fine." He raised his nose to the ceiling pompously. Cyborg however remained bewildered.

"I thought you said that little boy hit your head," he said.

"Well hey now he wasn't _so_ little. And I mean that was more of a light tap you know…" Beast Boy said raising his fingers to his bandages gingerly. Cyborg shook his head.

"You only have one wound on your head Beast Boy," he told him. Beast Boy paused and looked at him confused.

"Huh?" he asked beginning to feel around his head for more bandages. "That's impossible my hair had as much blood in it as Robin's has gel." Cyborg shook his head again.

"Man all I know is you only have one cut on yer head and it was pretty recent when I found you," Cyborg said. Beast Boy stared at him puzzled. Had he dreamed the Man in Black? That wasn't right. He'd stumbled the whole way back to the tower and Robin had been concerned when he saw him because his head was all banged up…. It made no sense.

Cyborg stared at Beast Boy consciously aware of that deep sense of concern and dread that was still planted in the pit of his stomach. Had Beast Boy been hallucinating as well? He glanced over at Raven, sleeping lightly in a bed across the room and allowed his eyes to travel over to Robin's empty bed. First Robin, then Raven… and now Beast Boy. It almost seemed like someone… some thing was attacking them. Attacking not physically, but mentally. As he turned back to Beast Boy a thought suddenly occurred to him, stretching that nervous feeling in his gut. Where was Starfire?

oooooooooooooooooo

Starfire bent over and coughed violently. She gasped in confusion and pain as her throat flared with a burning agony and her chest constricted, trying to get rid of the phlegm developing inside. She was walking along the shore of the Jump City bay across the harbor from the Tower, and she had no idea what was wrong with her. Robin had told her of the strange diseases that the humans seemed to often succumb to on this planet, but Starfire had never been sick in her life. The flaring and swelling in her throat and her congestion and violent coughing were as foreign to her as the earthling's ways of living when she'd first arrived on this planet.

Slowly her ragged breathing came under her control and she looked up across the water to the Tower. She was terrified. The disease was beginning to eat away at her inhuman strength and powers and the concept of being weak was all of a sudden within Starfire's grasp. She had no idea what was happening to her, what to do about her ailment. Was it possible she'd contracted Captain Red?

The Tower seemed to stretch higher than usual, a black looming form silhouetted against the darkened horizon. Deep within Starfire's subconscious she was striving against the anxieties of her friends seeing her weakened, believing her useless to the team just as she'd been when her sister came to visit. Coughing once again, Starfire turned away from the tower, her eyes thick and glazed from the effects of fever on her alien body. She staggered forward uncertain, unknowing in the correct path to take. She had never been anything other than inhumanly healthy, prodigious in strength to her teammates. They couldn't see her in this state.

She continued to stagger her way up the beach enveloped in the dark night, coughing and wheezing. Her vision blurred and her fever soared and the influenza virus within continued to rot her from the inside out.

oooooooooooooooooooo

Batman looked around the dismal research facilities calmly. Had he not been wearing the mask he would have been sick to his stomach. Corpses littered the room in various stages of decomposition, their bodies ruined and twisted from the ailment that had taken them. They were dressed in white airtight suits that had failed to keep the virus from corrupting them, except for one man dressed entirely in uniform. That particular man held a gun in his hand and the back of his head was disintegrated; fragments from his skull and strings of brain tissue splattering the wall behind him. Batman deduced that he had taken himself before the disease had had a chance to completely ruin his body, but he was still mangled from the effects of ailment.

Batman wore an airtight suit and a gasmask with his trademark pointed bat ears jetting from the top. He didn't fear the virus getting through his protective wear (he'd designed it himself). But he did fear for Robin and the Titans. He'd gone to the Tower and entered it, sneaking past the brilliant but passable security systems Cyborg had designed, but the rooms of the Titans had been empty, as well as the common rooms of the Tower. Rather than completely search the Tower he'd left to patrol the city, partially hoping to run into the titans out in the streets, but mostly curious as to the plague that was infecting the city. It didn't smell natural to him, and he wanted to know its source.

Carefully Batman kneeled down next to the corpse of a heinously grinning, wet skeleton. He scraped off a sample of tissue hoping the virus stayed squirming around for a while after death. He stood up and looked around at the scientific equipment. Though it wasn't as acutely developed or technologically advanced as his own equipment back at the cave, it would do just fine to get a look at the disease. He opened a few drawers and found a box of glass slides. He carefully placed the tissue on a wet mount and slid it under a high-powered microscope. Leaning over, Batman gazed through the scope. He saw the cells of the man dead and still, and among them he spotted an organism he'd never seen before in his life, a single cell that was red tinted and ringed with papilla. For a moment he stared at it fascinated, but the longer he looked the uneasier he became. This disease, whatever it was, was not a product of nature. Batman eventually jerked his head back from the microscope. He carefully placed a sample of tissue that contained the virus into an air-sealed container he'd brought with him and slipped it into his utility belt. He hoped to bring the virus home and develop a cure for it, but the more he thought about bringing the virus out of Jump City, of allowing it access to other cities, the more unsure he became. If he infected Gotham…. Eventually Batman made up his mind to analyze the tissue further at the Tower. He'd attempt to develop a cure there unless desperate needs drove him to the Batcave. With a snap of his cape, Batman whirled out of the research room, away from the victimized scientists that had failed in the hopes of accomplishing what he was now setting out to achieve.

oooooooooooooooooooo

Cyborg and Beast Boy strode along the harbor, dusted in starlight, hoping to run across Starfire. Cyborg had tried contacting her with the communicator but for some reason she wouldn't answer. Beast Boy had suggested they head out into the city and, completely at a loss as to what to do with two of their members missing and one hospitalized, Cyborg had reluctantly agreed to leave Raven's side. A high-powered light mounted on his shoulder illuminated the darkness and Beast Boy was in his hound state, sniffing the ground occasionally, searching for Starfire's scent.

"Find anything yet?" Cyborg asked. He still had that uneasy feeling in the pit of his stomach and it refused to go away. Beast Boy glanced up from the ground and gave him a tiny whine. Cyborg took that as a no. The darkness seemed particularly tangible that evening and Cyborg was restraining his mind from running off with the shadows and freaking himself out. Suddenly Beast Boy stopped short, his nose glued to the ground.

"Wha-" Cyborg started but Beast Boy gave a low, long whine cutting him off. Cyborg furrowed his eyebrows in confusion. It sounded like he was scared. Beast Boy morphed back to his human shape and turned toward Cyborg nervously. Cyborg raised one eyebrow, asking for an explanation.

"I found her sent-" he began uneasily. "But… it's got the virus in it too. I-I think… I think she's got the disease." Cyborg stared at Beast Boy, that nervous feeling all of a sudden augmented ten times. Starfire sick? But she was alien. She didn't get human diseases.

"She… you can smell the plague on her?" he said unsure. Beast Boy nodded his head mournfully. The two stood there for a moment unsure of their next move. Then Cyborg braced his shoulders and collectively calmed his emotions.

"Ok man, lets find her," he said to Beast Boy, who seemed to snap out of a trance and morphed back to his bloodhound nodding his head. Together, they headed out toward the shore, Beast Boy following the distorted sent of Starfire and Cyborg, feeling hollow and nervous and that ever present anxious pinch in the bottom of his gut, followed close behind.

oooooooooooooooooooo

Raven moaned in her sleep and turned restless beneath her sheet. Her breathing was shallow and steady, but her heartbeat was erratic and quick as a frightened bunny's. She was dreaming.

The alleyway was long and dank, dripping with streams of water and darkness. She was looking for something, though she had no idea what. At the same time, she was acutely aware of something following her. Something hostile. She could sense its eyes, but couldn't see it. She could feel it listening intently to her, but couldn't hear it. She knew it was tracking her scent like a beast but could smell nothing except for the crisp, night air. 

For some reason she had a rising sense of terror welling in her chest. She didn't know what she was afraid of, but she felt hounded and trapped, like some savage who'd provided some former traumatic experience to her was stalking her. The alleyway stretched further and further and the blackness seemed to well in around her.

_There was a sudden image distortion that dreams got when switching scenes and Raven found herself in the middle of a warehouse. It was completely empty, and though Raven could see the distant lining of windows at the top of the walls, the shadows were so complete that the only thing she could see was a dark form under a single hanging light. The image reminded her of a police interrogation._

_The form under the light slowly turned toward her. It was a man with a round, grinning smile and an ageless face. His eyes were ancient and cold and blue. He was dressed entirely in black._

"_Welcome welcome my little raven. Polly wanna cracker?" he said cracking a smile. Raven felt uneasy and that growing sense of terror welling in her chest once again. The Man in Black's grin lessoned and his eyes glinted maliciously._

"_I've been waiting for you Raven. I have need of you, of your- gifts," he said softly. "I'm waiting my dear. Come to me. It is your destiny." The light above him blinked out and Raven was plunged into darkness. She felt those cold eyes grazing her and her breathing dragged out, ragged and scared. And then-_

Raven awoke disoriented and confused in the med bay bed. She was alone. Slowly she sat up looking around the room hoping to see Cyborg or Robin or Starfire or _anyone_. She was disappointed when she found the room still and quiet but she soon remembered the problem. Robin was gone. That thing in the tower had gotten him while she'd been slaving to her emotions. A deep, dark rage began to build up in Raven's chest. She hadn't been able to do anything for him because she'd been too consumed with her own inability to control herself.

Raven threw the sheet off and slung her legs over the side of the bed. Rage clouded her eyes and fueled her movement. She thought of him hurt somewhere, calling for help and how she'd been lying here sleeping doing nothing for him. How the rest of the team had left him there, wherever he was, to rot. How he'd felt so entirely helpless against the Virus and hadn't been able to do anything. The rage continued to build in her chest. It was completely unfair that Robin would be taken like that. She had to find him, to help him. She stood from her bed and began walking toward the door. Before she'd reached it the metal screeched, flashed black and condensed, crumbling itself into a ball as if it were some useless paper note being thrown away. The door cast aside and the next one followed, and the next, until she stood at the Tower doors. Determined to find her leader, Raven stepped down from the Tower, her eyes hazed over in that milky white, and her mind distorted from the amount of uncontrolled emotions that still seemed to be running through her. Raven however hardly noticed at all. She was induced with a fever-like need to find Robin, and distorted from her dreams and hallucinations. As she strolled across the island the thoughts of her uncontrolled power, thoughts of the emotions that she spent near her all of her free time keeping under control, were furthest from her mind.

oooooooooooooooooooo

Robin's eyes fluttered open and he was once again aware of dripping water throbbing to the beat of his headache. His eyes slowly focused on the ground in front of him and he realized he was still in that little cell. His arms however were unchained, and he was lying on the ground. The depth of the shadows was gone. His cell seemed to be lightly illuminated by some source. Carefully he picked himself up off the ground, striving against the rolling dizziness that overtook him. It was then that he realized his possessions had been taken.

He was wearing a simple sleeveless cotton shirt that hung loosely to his waist and his regular black costume pants, a combination that looked ridiculous. His boots were gone leaving him barefoot along with his utility belt and, much to his deep irritation, his mask.

Robin walked steadily and slowly toward the thick door and looked out the small barred window. There was a hallway lined with the same type of doors as his cell leading up to a spiraling set of stairs. Robin placed his hand on the door handle but expectedly it didn't budge. He stepped back and considered the door. He had a few explosives in his belt that could have taken it out but there was no way he was opening it with his bare fists. He turned back around and considered the rest of his cell. Stone blocks. No way out.

He sighed and sat down in the corner of his cell, his head continuing to throb. He would have to wait until someone came for him… or until the Man in Black returned…. Robin stayed sitting in the corner of his cell, slowly healing as his headache eased off, for what seemed like hours. The silence bothered him at first but he took comfort in it after a while, in the absence of anyone while he was in such a helpless state. Eventually however he heard the light thumping of someone walking down those spiraling stairs.

He placed his hand on the wall behind him and eased down to the ground, closing his eyes and slowing his breathing to feign unconsciousness. The footsteps grew louder, and a wheezing began to accompany them. Robin took that for whomever's it was breathing. The footsteps came to a stop outside his cell and he heard the wheezing grow the tiniest bit louder as the man stretched on his toes to look in through the barred window. Robin could feel his cynical eyes on him and suppressed an urge to recoil. There was a light thump as the man dropped down from his toes and a tiny rattling as he unlocked the ancient bearings on the door. Slowly the door swung open and the man shuffled forward, his wheezing breath bearing into Robin's ears. He stopped for a moment, doing something Robin could neither see nor hear. That was when Robin decided he'd waited long enough.

His eyes snapped open and he rolled onto his back, glaring up at the surprised looking man. He lurched his weight back and swung his feet up and forward, landing a kip in front of the now frozen man staring with wide eyes. Robin felt his heart calm when the man didn't raise a sound or hand to him but when he brought his fist up toward the man's face, the man blocked him with a speed Robin wouldn't have thought possible. Robin leapt back gracefully and the man hunched over, wheezing and smiling a horrific clown's grin. The man lifted a tiny silver box in his hand and waved it at Robin, acting as if he were making some hilarious joke. He pressed a button on it and the lights around the cell keeping the shadows back shut down.

The effect on Robin was immediate. His throat tightened and his heart picked up an erratic speed, hammering in his chest. He recoiled from the black surrounding him, slamming against the wall. He heard the man wheezing out a dry, rasping laugh as panicked fluttering thoughts raced through his mind in disarray. _Turn the lights on. Get the button from him. Turn the lights on. Not the dark not the dark not the dark. _He flayed wildly forward, reaching out, searching for the man. The wheezing laugh faltered in surprise and Robin heard the man shuffle back a few steps. Robin followed the thumping sounds of the man's boots and felt his finger graze the skin of him, cold and clammy and filthy. He leapt forward high and wild, bringing his feet down on the man's sternum and knocking him over, landing completely on top of him. As Robin wrestled with the man, trying to get the button out of his grasp he realized that someone was screaming a piercing, inhuman, terrified scream. He ripped the button from the man's grasp and as he slammed his thumb down onto the button he realized that it was him screaming.

The lights popped back on and Robin was bathed in the warmth of the luminous glow. He stumbled back and fell against the wall of his cell, his heart calming and his breath stabilizing. His eyes refocused as his pupils contracted to the light and he saw the man lying motionless on the ground. His thoughts stopped racing and he stared at the man for a moment, a new fear prickling through his mind. He slowly walked over to the man, leaned over and checked his pulse. Weak but steady. He reached up and checked his carotid arteries and gave a sigh of relief. The man was fine, just knocked out. Robin glanced at his chest where he'd jumped on him and saw the beginnings of some major bruising but nothing that looked broken. The man's unconsciousness seemed to stem from where he'd hit his head on the ground. He was fine.

Robin searched the man's pockets and found a ring of keys. He stuck the ring under the hem of his pants allowing the keys to dangle from his waist and picked up the silver button. He wasn't sure if it would work on any other dark corridors but there was no harm in taking it with him. He stood back up and slowly walked out of his cell, keeping his weight on the balls of his feet to stay silent. He walked up the winding stairs, his eyes grazing the corners hoping no one was hiding around a bend in wait. He eventually came to the top of the stairs and faced another ancient, iron lined wood door. To the side of the door however was a much smaller looking trap door. He made up his mind and went for the trap door, bringing his hand up and clutching the metal ring bolted to the side. He pulled gently and the door swung down, revealing a huge room stretching back seemingly 100 feet that seemed to be in use for storage. Bowing his head, Robin crawled through the opening and leapt down to the isle below.

oooooooooooooooooooo

Beast Boy was in his bloodhound form, and he was hot on Starfire's trail. Beast Boy's green fur rippled over his muscles as he bounded relentlessly across the dark sand, nose to the ground and ears pricked forward. Cyborg was jogging after him, panting softly in the cool night air sending hot puffs of fog billowing from his mouth. The two had been tracking their alien friend for over an hour and both were getting anxious to find her. Cyborg wasn't only worried about Starfire, who he still had doubts was sickness, but Raven as well. They'd left her alone at the tower hoping to find Starfire within the next hour or so. However their search was dragging longer then expected and the thought of Raven having another of her episodes while alone scared him.

Beast Boy stopped dead in his tracks and Cyborg had to skid to a halt to avoid ramming into him. Beast Boy gave a final sniff to the ground and then morphed back into his human form, sitting forlorn on the sand.

"Her trail's dead," he told Cyborg. "She musta flown off somewhere." Cyborg stared at him, his eyes unfocused in thought. He snapped his communicator off his belt and transmitted a signal to her again but the screen virred with static. He snapped it back to his belt and looked at Beast Boy at a loss for what to do. It was moments like these when Cyborg was most aware of the team's need for Robin as their leader. He was indecisive. Though sometimes he felt the team would prosper greatly under his lead, he knew that it would never do as well without Robin as their leader. He sighed and made up his mind.

"Ok man… we'll do a quick check around here and if she's not anywhere around we need to get back to the Tower. Check on Raven. Then we can get back out here in a couple hours and pick up the search." He told Beast Boy who nodded in agreement. Beast Boy melted back into his bloodhound and bounded across the sand, his eagerness and anxiousness to find Starfire making him look like a playful puppy. Cyborg slid his heat sensory lens over his mechanical eye and began scanning the vicinity. He strode across the beach not bothering to use his eyes to watch for obstacles, but running his feet along the ground with his toes pointed out feeling for rocks or divots instead.

He saw the red and orange and yellow form of Beast Boy standing up the beach some with his nose pointed to the ground and turned back toward the rock outcropping lining the harbor. As his eyes grazed past the ragged edges of the rocky shore he nearly missed the blazing red hair partially hidden behind a volcanic black stone. He was sprinting toward her before he'd realized what he'd seen.

Starfire was breathing shallowly and harshly, her chest rising and constricting in violent coughs. She was harshly pale, contrasting against the dark color of her hair in the night and her eyes, which were half open with drooping lids, were glazed over in fever. Cyborg kneeled next to her at a loss for words, his mind roaring in panic. On some subconscious level he was terrified of the man or creature that was rendering his team useless, and as more and more of his team members turned up in desperate need for medical attention he felt as though he was eventually going to be left to face him alone. He saw Beast Boy sprinting over as a cheetah with his peripheral vision and carefully lifted Starfire's head into his arms. He placed her head into the crook of his left arm and slid her legs under his right, rising softly from the sand. Beast Boy slid to a stop in front of him transforming into his human shape before he'd come to a full stop.

"Is she ok!" he said anxious and scared. Cyborg merely shook his head. The plague didn't have a cure. He was hoping Starfire's alien immune system would be strong enough to fight it back but he didn't know nearly enough about her anatomy to make any secure deductions. Beast Boy clenched his jaw and without another word his body stretched into his pterodactyl form. He leapt into the air beating his mighty wings once and gently took Cyborg by the shoulders, providing an airlift for him and Starfire back to the Tower.

ooooooooooooooooooo

Robin glanced around the warehouse, muscles stretched taught beneath his skin in tension. Crates and boxes were stacked high above him, some stacks stretching fifteen or twenty feet above his head. He was obviously in some sort of storage center. Returning his attention to the moment at hand he started back at the isle he currently stood in. Stealthily, Robin stalked in the shadows of the crates, ears striving for any person that might see him. The warehouse dripped with silence. As Robin turned a corner, his eyes focused back down the isle he was walking down, a short, middle-aged man shrieked from around the side of a crate, throwing his papers in the air in an effort to raise his hands above his head. Robin, caught off guard, spun around toward the source of the noise raising his fists in defense. Terrified the man spoke.

"Look, I didn' mean ta," he said trembling. "I was jus' following' ma orders you know? There ain't no need to be hurtin' no one." Robin slowly lowered his fists and crouched down in front of the man.

"I'm not gonna hurt you," he said quietly. The man remained unconvinced and backed away from him up against a crate. Robin held out his palms to show he meant no harm.

"I'm unarmed," he pointed out. The man scoffed at him and Robin fought off a grin. Of course he was armed. His fists remained his permanent and most useful weapons.

"Alright listen, I'm not gonna harm you ok?" he said trying to sound soothing, but the night in the cell and his suffering from lack of sleep made his voice harsh and rough. The man continued to look scared and resistant.

"I just need you to tell me what's going on here," he tried. "What's in all these crates? Why does he want them?" The man lowered his arms and stared into Robin's eyes.

"By 'he' I'm guessin' you mean the dark man. The one all in black, am'I right? He I'n't right in the head. There somthin' wrong with'im… he gives me nightmares…" Robin stared intently into the man's eyes hoping to intimidate some answers out of him.

"Look I don't have time for this. Just tell me what's going on here." He said again, purposely snapping out angrily. The man looked alarmed.

"I don' know. He don' tell me nothin'. I just deliver these crates to this here storage." He said quickly. Robin narrowed his eyes.

"What's in the crates?" he asked.

"I… I don't know. He don' tell me nothin'. I jus' do what I'm told you know? Nothin' wrong with doin' a man's job is it?"

"You're lying." Robin told him. The man looked nervous and began to pick up a stutter.

"I-I dunno what you're talkin' about. I-I ain't lyin', it- t'ain't in my morals. I'm jus'-" Robin bared his teeth angrily. He grabbed the man by the shirt and pushed him back against the crates.

"Tell me what's in the crates! Tell me what he's doing!" he barked savagely. The man looked on the edge of panic and raised his hands up to his face again.

"Ok ok ok! Don' hurt me s'all. I'll tell you ok?" He squealed. Robin let go and took a step back from him. The man glanced wearily at him.

"It's some sort'a drug. I dunno what it is alright? He's all chemical about it or somethin'. Makin' some sort a'experiments with them. I dunno what he's tryin' tado with it all." The man looked nervously at Robin but Robin was no longer paying attention to him, deep in thought. He was remembering the very first villain his mentor had defeated. The one that called himself the Scarecrow. As Batman had explained to him, the Scarecrow had used a panic-inducing gas on his victims, altering their conscious state of mind and causing horrific hallucinations to terrify them. What if the Man in Black had used some sort of poison on him to make him fear the dark? What if he wasn't having fugues but merely taking in some sort of drug that was altering his mind, causing irrational fears? Robin felt an immense relief flood over him. He wasn't going crazy. He was being poisoned. He returned his attention back to the man in front of him.

"Do you know where he performs these experiments? Where he's making the poisons?" he asked. The man quickly shook his head.

"No no I dunno anythin' like tha', I tell you he don' tell me nothin' of importance. I'm jus' the delivery guy." Robin narrowed his eyes again and opened his mouth to tell him off for lying when a whirring sound spun past his ear. He stared surprised at a small silver knife penetrating from the man's chest.

"My my it _is_ difficult to come by good, loyal employees now a'days isn't it?" The Man in Black said amused from across the warehouse. The man Robin had been questioning fell back against the crates raising his hands to his chest not quite comprehending, too afraid to touch the knife. A drop of blood pressed through his lips and rolled down his chin. He gave a pained, disbelieving grunt and slid down to the floor in shock. Robin felt cold and distant, helpless as he watched a pool of blood grow from beneath the man.

"Now," began the Man in Black flashing Robin a grin. "I believe you and I have some business to discuss." He began strolling up the isle toward him. "For instance," he pulled out his lighter and snapped it on, "why is Tweety outside his cage when he knows very well that Sylvester's just around the corner waiting for him?"

"Don't be stupid," Robin said smiling. "Everyone knows Tweety outsmarts that cat every time." He stepped away from the corpse at his feet and shifted into his defense stance. The Man in Black laughed.

"You want to fight me little boy?" he taunted. His eyes narrowed and his pace slowed. "You forget… I am the dark man. I rule the night. I forge the shadows. I am the monster every child fears is hiding in their closet when the lights go out." He pulled out another silver knife. "And last I saw, you don't seem to like the dark very much." He said. Then he threw his knife. Robin's eyes weren't quick enough to follow the blade but he realized just after he'd lurched his body to the side that the Man in Black's body had been pointing too far to the side to be in a position to throw toward him. He heard the knife hit something metal and then an electric surge and the warehouse was plunged into darkness. The Man in Black had hit the fuse box.

Robin felt his breath catch in his throat as he waited for the panic. His muscles tensed in anticipation and he froze in place staring into the dark waiting for the wraithes, the demons, the terror… and he felt nothing akin to fear. He smiled just long enough towards the Man in Black to see his surprised expression before he spun around, sprinted down the center isle and dodged off behind a crate.

"Drugs wear off?" he called. "I guess you can't fight like a coward anymore." He peered around the edge of the crate but the Man in Black had moved off somewhere. He turned back and gasped as a hand shot forward towards his face. He ducked down but the fingers clasped around his shirt. Robin lurched back and rolled across the floor, his shirt tearing in the Man in Black's grasp. He jumped up a few feet from the darkman, the remains of his shirt dragging limply in ragged strands from his arms. He tore the tatters of his shirt from his chest to keep them from restricting movement and backpedaled out of the reach.

For the first time since Robin had first seen the Man in Black, his smile faltered, smearing into a psychotic look of deep rage. He raised his fingers and made for a grasp in Robin's direction but Robin once again dodged, skittering at the borderline of the darkman's arm length and falling back into the shadows.

"Now, now little Robin," the Man sneered. "Don't go casting alcohol into the fire just to see it burn brighter." He snapped his lighter on throwing the shadows back a few feet but Robin had already ducked down behind a crate looking around for some form of weapon. He heard the Man in Black softly pad forward with his dark leather boots.

"Come out come out where ever you arrrre…" the man sang softly. His smile had returned and he began tearing away boxes and crates searching for Robin, carelessly tossing them aside creating piles of splintered crates broken open and boxes thrown askew. "If it's a game of hide and seek you want Robin, I'll play with you. I always liked that game you know. But all the little children never wanted to play with me." His eyes glinted maliciously.

"I can't imagine why." Robin said softly. The Man in Black chuckled but seemingly didn't manage to pinpoint his voice. He continued searching.

Robin spotted the remains of his torn shirt on the ground and snatched it up. He ripped it in half as the man pushed a crate to the ground with a loud crash, conscious of the terribly loud noise the tearing made but hoping the Man had masked it with his banging. Robin tied the two pieces of clothe to the soles of his bare feet to muffle any sound they might make, as well as provide some form of protection, and slid out from the crate silent as a wraith, crouching slightly. He snuck across the center isle of the room and slid behind a foundation pole.

"So where's Slade hiding in all this?" He called out. His voice echoed across the warehouse. Robin hoped the Man in Black wouldn't be able to use his voice to find him. He watched the Man in Black as he continued to search the room for him and then began shimmying up the foundation, using the huge bolts securing the iron in place as hand and foot holds.

"I believe he's off doing business little Robin." The Man in Black called cheerily. "He was _so_ happy to see you though. I tell ya' if I hadn't a'known better I woulda thought it a father son reunion." Robin had lost sight of him but he could imagine the Man in Black laughing silently to himself. "At least till you blacked out that is."

Robin stopped about half way up and leapt from it to a pile of crates, bending his knees to absorb the blow, hoping to keep his landing silent. The crashing below of the Man in Black's search for him suddenly ceased and Robin stopped dead in his tracks. He held a hand over his mouth to muffle his breathing, keeping entirely silent. He scanned the room from his newly acquired perch hoping to spot the Man in Black, but he'd lost sight of him.

"Robin," the Man in Black whispered into his ear. Robin's eyes widened and he spun around raising his fist on reflex. The Man's face snapped back as Robin's blow made contact to his cheek. Robin stood for a moment surprised at his own punch. The Man laughed delighted and brought up his own fist. He slammed it into Robin's jaw and sent him sprawling backwards.

"UNH" Robin grunted wheeling his arms to catch his balance. The Man leaped lightly after him and landed a blow to his sternum. Robin's lost his fight for balance and tumbled backwards, landing heavily on his back. He felt a moment of confusion when his head didn't make contact with anything, but quickly realized he was on the edge of the crate. He rolled over grabbing onto the edge and lurched his weight up and forward, heaving his body up into a handstand. He allowed his weight to fall back over the side, twisting his body and bringing his right hand across his left, turning around so he faced the crate as he swung down. He bounced off the wooden side, dangling from the edge, and then let go falling lightly to the ground. Upon contact he bent his knees and leapt forward into a roll, coming up with his fists raised in case the Man had somehow managed to sneak back to the ground as he'd snuck up to the crate.

The Man in Black stood on top of the crate looking down at him with a gleeful glint in his eye. He raised his hand either to wave or throw something but before he had a chance to find out, Robin, to the Man in Black's surprise, turned and began sprinting toward the huge exit doors. The Man in Black yelled something but Robin's blood was roaring in his ears so loud he couldn't hear as he used every ounce of strength he had to reach the door. Something slammed into a crate next to him splitting it open and dropping its contents out onto the floor. Robin made a wailing jump over it, stumbling slightly on return contact to the ground but keeping his momentum up.

Rather than slow down to open the door he threw his hands up and slammed into it, ramming into the thick wood to break his speed. He grabbed the handle and shoved forward with a grunt. Another something slammed into the door above his head before the door swung wide open. Robin was vaguely aware of the darkman yelling as he exited the dark warehouse, but all Robin cared about at that moment was the cool air on his bare chest and the soft dirt under his feet. As he sprinted out into the maze of city streets, it wasn't the Man in Black laughing, but Robin as he felt the lift of victory rise in his chest. He'd escaped.


	7. Chapter 6

Katherine Wolfe was a loner. She had no husband, no kids, no friends, and rarely spoke to her relatives. If the rest of the world died and she was left the only person on earth, she would have been perfectly content. Katherine rarely left her house, spending most of her time watching soap operas and the news. She took a sick pleasure in watching the world kill itself through pollution, terrorism and war. The more horrific the news the better. But over the last couple weeks she'd begun to get a horrible twisting fear of something happening in her city.

The news reports of some new virus outbreak in the city had first reported months ago and Katherine had thought nothing of it. However, slowly, hardly noticeably at first, the reports of death to that new disease had risen in the city, and the small outbreak of disease had become a slight epidemic. And then a few days ago, the news reporter had broken down, screaming about thousands dead, bodies in the streets, plague ravishing the city. And all of a sudden the slight epidemic was a full-blown one. Two days ago the president had had a conference on the issue of Jump City, stating it was under control, and that there was a cure working in effect already. For now however Jump City remained closed to all incoming and outgoing traffic. But Katherine didn't believe him, because for the first time in three weeks she'd poked her nose outside her house and seen the affects of Captain Red right outside.

There was a vehicle sitting on the lawn of her next-door neighbor's lawn, its dark wheels cutting into the soft grass coated in an early-morning dew. Inside, in front of the wheel was her neighbor, Phil she believed, lying still, head propped against the headrest. His neck was swelled to a grotesque trunk and his eyes had fallen in his sockets as he'd begun to decompose. Sitting next to him was his lovely wife holding their child in her lap. The two were holding hands, the mother clasping her child close to her no longer beating heart. The child and mother both looked twisted and malformed, their necks stretched and limbs shrunk from loss of weight. Phil's wife's beautiful hair hung in ragged strands and both she and the baby's upper lip was encrusted with phlegm. Disgusted Katherine slammed the door shut. It was just like _people_ to die in her front lawn. Never leaving her in peace.

Over the next few weeks Katherine stayed in her house, watching her TV until the power suddenly and unexpectedly shut down. The City became unceasingly quiet and the streets stopped whirring with traffic. She moved down to her basement where she kept a large supply of emergency food and when a pack of delusional people broke into her house and raided it she hardly minded. It took Katherine a full seven weeks after the disease stole young Garret's life, nearly three weeks since the disease had become noticeable and the Titans had become aware of it. And when she did, the only thing she wanted more was for those stupid doctors to come up with a cure. But she didn't expect them to, because people didn't shine in times of desperation. When things went to hell they didn't come back through the selflessness of people, they came back from a turning of the tides, a storm of luck. As she lay surrounded by cans and packets of freeze-dried food, unable to eat anything due to the disease, she was most disgusted with the world, with her city, with the people who lived in it. They weren't worth the lack of coins in her pockets. If they couldn't save themselves they deserved whatever death was dealt out to them. So Katherine Wolfe died alone, just the way she liked.

oooooooooooooooooooooooo

The Man in Black was walking south along Main Street, somewhere between the old sector of the city and the harbor. The man, who strode confidently along the silent and deserted streets, had many names, but to most he was known as a dark stranger, a smiling face that had visited the dreams of the most ruthless and brutal of Hitler's army of nazis, who had whispered ideas to the leaders that led activist groups against civil right movements promoting blood in the streets, who had spawned the vengeful answer of genocide to malicious leaders of the Hutus for their Tutsi problems in the subconscious of their dreams. He was ageless, his face devoid of lines and glowing with a terrible glee that seemed accented by his black attire. To some he had been known as Azrael, the angel of death. Others called him Beelzebub, the reaper, Sammael, Sariel. In Georgia he was known as Rick Underwood, in Alabama he was Jack Freeman, in California he was Malik, in Gotham City he was Pyro (he'd picked up that nickname due to his recent habit of flickering a lighter). But in Jump City, he was simply the Man in Black, and as he strode south on Main Street, somewhere past the old part of town but not quite to the harbor, he felt mighty fine, though he'd been in a fit of rage only hours before.

His dark leather boots clocked along the pavement in a beat matching the city's heart. The street was empty, cars abandoned in the streets, some filled with dead bodies. The darkness of the night made it impossible to view such corpses but he could smell them, could sense them empowering him. His eyes seemed frantic with excitement and glee, and his rolling gait was loose, relaxed, a rocking stroll that only those completely content with the circumstances they were in could experience.

The Man in Black could remember the wild hot lynchings of the civil rights movements in the South. He remembered the feeling of power after the victory of Desert Storm. He could remember the wild, hot emotion running, streaming across America when Pearl Harbor had been bombed. He remembered the dust bowl, the depression, Stalin, the failure of the Treaty of Versailles. Christmas on the lines of 1918, and the senseless slaughter of millions through acts of chemical warfare during World War I. He recalled the assassination of that tall man Lincoln and he remembered the enormous monstrous hate for the slaves that were caught in the middle of the heated civil war, dreaming of freedom surrounded by death. He remembered through a veil of haze back, far, far back the Salem trials, and before then the Crusades. He didn't know how long he'd been around, his memories stretched back thousands of years and even then, he felt that that wasn't where he'd begun his life. It seemed like he had always been there. Never out in the open, but a slippery being in the shadows of the nights, writing malicious speeches for age-old dictators, slipping cold metal guns into innocent fingers, offering a jug of fiery whiskey to an alcoholic father already hot on his toes toward his wife and children. He Rolled down the roads of black night where even the insane and crazy could gaze into his sparkling eyes for mere moments.

He would stop for supper soon, a skillet-fried meal over an open fire (the electricity of the city had finally shut down) of whatever was lying around. Afterwards he would continue on through the city, perhaps back along Main Street, or maybe up to the business section. It didn't matter where he went, as long as he got there when the time came, because the people were beginning to gather. He could feel them behind the drawn curtains of the apartment buildings, locked in the dark basements of houses and hiding below in the subway systems. They were racked with grief for the dead succumbed to Captain Red. A mother in a near comatose state above the rocking crib of her dead child. A husband weeping silently, now lying alone in his bed. A brother with his nieces held close weeping in his arms, head bowed for his deceased sibling. They were broken, terrified, lonely, spread across the remains of their plague-ravished city; all experiencing the same deep ache wallowing in their hearts. But he knew that soon they would come together. It had already begun. And when they did he would be there soothing, calming, whispering. A comforting shadow providing guidance to Jump City's people, who'd gladly accept him.

He rocked along the pavement, indifferent to his surroundings, to the place or the time or the reasons. The population of the city had been sliced, thousands dead and thousands dying. Yes sir… and wasn't it fine? The plague that he'd stolen from the base hidden in the harsh deserts of California was a man-made disease meant for bio-chemical warfare. A plague that had been first looked upon as a savior against terrorism, and eventually looked upon in fear as the destruction of all. The base was a research facility where the government had sent its top biochemistry scientists, where they'd developed deadly, inhuman weapons in the name of a better world. Weapons to jostle terror into the strongest of men for the simplest of things. Weapons that attacked the body with viperous prowess and spread across populations like a dry brush fire. Weapons that ate into the sanity of a men like acid. Weapons that no man should have ever had the power to wield.

By the time the Man in Black had stumbled across the base, the men guarding it and working it were so afraid of what they'd created they'd practically thrown it at his feet. The guards had shot a few bullets and then backed off calling in backup for a single man in the night. The scientists had offered explanations of their weapons without so much as a stutter of protest. And when Jump City had began to rot from the inside out, the government had known exactly what was wrong, exactly what the disease was and exactly where it came from. And they'd roped the city off because admitting to the development of Red's Disease would be admitting to the indirect slaughter of Jump City. So they'd turned a blind eye in fear.

The Man in Black continued his rolling gait south along Main Street, nearly to the harbor, but not quite. The hot, sticky air of the city blew through his dark hair and wisped around his legs. He reflected on the little Teen Titan's leader whom he'd wanted to get rid of that had fled hours earlier, causing his enragement. That a child would outwit him, would escape him was a joke. He'd never felt so angry in his life, so confused as to a defeat. However, within the last hour he'd come to understand what was wrong. His time hadn't come yet. For the last couple weeks the darkness had been welling up inside of him, strengthening his twisted powers, hardening his muscles, quickening his fists, sharpening his mind. But he wasn't finished, which was why Robin had escaped. The next time he saw little Robin, or any of the others, it would be too late. Their time to fight him was quickly coming to a close and the only one that had come into contact with him was Robin. By the time they'd gathered, there would be no way to stop him, no way to defeat him. And even better, the little girl was his. The dark one. The Raven. He'd sensed her darkness some time ago and been drawn to it by some magnetic force he couldn't describe. But when he'd taken a look inside, all he'd seen was walls, walls, walls hiding it all away for no one to see, containing it against the world keeping it holed up inside of her. But for some reason, mere hours afterwards he'd felt them weakening. Almost as though his brief visit to her mind had tainted it and he'd called to her, sending her a dark message that only she would understand, that only the creatures of darkness can appreciate. And now… now she was coming to him. And wouldn't the wittle Robin be oh so distraught? The Man in Black grinned to the night. He would bring this city to its knees, and then the next and then the next until the land for hundreds of miles lay in fiery ruins, rotted corpses grinning toward the beating, ruthless sun or the cold, stranger of a moon.

The Man in Black walked south along Main Street, away from the old part of the City nearing the harbor, slowly but surely heading towards his destiny.

ooooooooooooooooooooo

Cyborg was leaning over Starfire's limp figure in immense concentration, beads of sweat rolling down the human part of his brow and the electrics and mechanic parts of his mecha humming softly. He was listening to her heartbeat, attempting to figure out if the difference in the rhythm was a part of her alien physiology or the disease slicing through her. Beast Boy sat in the corner with fresh bandages tied around his head (his others had fallen off when he'd transformed into his much larger pterodactyl form) looking exhausted and anxious, refusing to fall asleep. Upon their re-entrance both Beast Boy and Cyborg had immediately noticed Raven's absence. Once again Cyborg had been smacked with the horrible decision of searching for one of his team members or taking care of the medical issues of another of his team, Starfire. And once again he'd chosen the most immediate of problems.

He'd already issued Starfire a dose medication to numb her throat and ease her coughing but he didn't yet know if it was working on her Tamaranian body. Cyborg had never felt more afraid in his life. He was becoming increasingly aware that the only way he was going to save Starfire was to come up with a cure, and he hadn't yet been able to, even with all his research. Her life was riding on his medical capabilities and the more he'd been working on fighting the plague the more limited he'd realized he was.

Suddenly a blaring of sirens cut through the silence. Someone had broken into the tower. Cyborg slammed his eyes closed and groaned at the horrible timing. He looked over to Beast Boy feeling horrible for what he was about to ask but Beast Boy was already getting up.

"uhhh… can you leave her alone?" He asked unsure. Cyborg hesitantly shook his head no and Beast Boy nodded. He stared towards the door for a moment and than, for Cyborg's benefit, Grinned fiercely and stated "Eh don't worry I can tak'em" and transformed into a dark emerald panther, hoping to reassure Cyborg. He silently bounded from the room with Cyborg staring after, worried and helpless. He dragged his eyes away from the door back to Starfire and started up the computer system he'd hooked up to her. He wanted a picture of her inner organs to try and do the quickest scientific research on a new species ever done by man. Minutes passed in silence as he continued to inspect Starfire until he eventually heard Beast Boy's shoes clopping hurriedly up the hall. Cyborg glanced up just as Beast Boy snapped the door open and strode in.

"Dude!" he called across the room, his dark green eyes reflecting a shadow of the sparkling glee that usually filled them, "look what the panther dragged in!" Behind him a dark figure strode silently through the door. He was tall, covered in a black suit of body-armor and a mask that jetted from his head in two points, forming sharp bat ears. Cyborg stared unbelieving at Batman standing before him. Batman stole a look around the room and then landed his gaze on Cyborg.

"What's wrong with her?" he said in a deep, calm voice nodding his head toward Starfire. Cyborg's medical professionalism kicked in and he quickly dragged his mind back to the issue at hand. "She's got the virus," he stated. "She's not from here. A- an earthling I mean. She's from a planet called Tamaran. I… I was trying to figure out her anatomy so I could diagnose the virus and… and maybe come up with a cure." He mentally kicked himself at his nerves and stuttering. Batman strode across the room and gazed down at Starfire, breathing ragged and shallow on the bed. He glanced up at Cyborg and held out his hand for the notes in that Cyborg was holding. Cyborg handed them over and Batman stared long and hard at the data he'd managed to gather in the short amount of time he'd had. Batman gave a short, curt nod to himself and then looked toward Cyborg again.

"I have a sample of the virus," he said. "I'm going to make a cure for it. If we're lucky I can have it ready before his girl dies," he paused and looked around. "Can you show me where your research equipment is?" Cyborg stared at him, hope rising in his chest, shoving back the unease that was pitted in the roots of his stomach. Was it possible that the Bat would figure out how to defeat Red's Disease? He noticed the Batman's intense gaze through his dark mask and snapped back to reality.

"Eh… yea it's this way," he said starting toward a side-door attached to the med bay. The Batman followed closely behind, silent and dark.

ooooooooooooooooooooooo

The streets seemed strangely threatening to Robin without the cover of his mask. He wondered how anyone could wonder these streets open to the corrupt and desperate without fear. It was as though he was inviting those who would have harm on him to attack, to slip an advantage and destroy him.

Robin was exhausted and terribly paranoid. He didn't know if the Man in Black would come looking for him, but it wasn't just the prospect of recapture that caused the swelling of a cold fear in his chest. The streets were completely empty. The people of Jump City were gone, dead or hiding. The streets rang with silence, something more terrible than the delusional cries of the sick and fevered that had frequented when the plague was at its worse. A terrifying presence of nothingness, of loneliness and emptiness drilling through his outer defenses like a chill winter wind. His City, which he'd spent years defending against corruption, evil, greed and sin, resembled an ancient tomb, dripping with death and malice and ghosts.

Slowly he stalked the alleyways, hugging the sides of the buildings to keep to the shadows, a cautious, nervous wraith. For all his care, the streets continued to remain still, the thoroughfare of the dead. A winding lane of should-be wives driving the four-year-old to daycare, of should-be husbands starting and stopping through the 7 o'clock morning traffic, of should-be excited teenagers freshly turned out with a license and aspirations for the future. But instead, the only traffic was that of still silence crossing more still silence. Robin shuddered. Was his city already dead? No… though they weren't anywhere near him Robin could sense the presence of the citizens of his city. Alone, mourning, but alive. Still holding out. The plague had taken a toll of the city but it hadn't wiped it out, hadn't even come close to wiping it out. His fight was still alive.

He eventually came to the port and began weaving his way through the silent market, booths closed up for the night. He was about to make his way down to the beach where he planned on transmitting a signal to Cyborg when a freezing breeze twisted its way up his spine. Shivering, Robin got the distinct impression that he was being followed. He glanced back up the winding street lined with the cold, white-washed booths and saw no one.

Robinnn… 

Startled Robin whirled around looking for the source of the voice. It sounded like Raven, but lower, darker, another side of her that he'd never met. He turned back toward the market and back. Where had it come from? He continued to walk slowly, glancing around nervously, bird-like. He didn't notice the noise at first, but slowly he became aware of it. A low rumbling, like thunder but unbroken. It rose in volume and seemed to come towards him and Robin stopped mid-stride frozen. The noise continued to rise and he felt it press in on his eardrums. He spun trying to figure out the source but it was coming from all around him. And then there was another sound. High-pitched and shrill joining the monstrous thunder, vibrating his ears with a fierceness equal to any explosive. The ground beneath him was trembling, vibrating violently. Stones and loose gravel jumped around and he heard Raven again, nearly drowned out in the immense roaring.

Robin… ROBIN! 

Robin's heart hammered as he screamed above the roaring around him, "RAVEN! WHERE ARE YOU? TALK TO ME RAVEN PLEASE WHERE ARE YOU!"

He took a few stumbling steps forward and yet another noise joined the piercing shrill and the gigantic roar. This time it was a terrified, confused wail of utter misery. It was Raven.

"RAVEN!" Robin shrieked sprinting toward the shore. He was more scared of the screams rising around him than he'd ever feared any criminal in his life. Rising emotions hammered in his chest as fast as his heart, squirming to break his hold of control, screaming for him to pay attention to them. Robin didn't have time to pay attention to any new emotions though. All he needed right now was to find Raven.

Suddenly, as though it were cut with a sharp pair of scissors, all three noises dropped and left Robin in utter silence. His ears rang softly for a few seconds and he could hear his heart slamming against his sternum but the streets were once again as silent as they'd started. Robin froze, slamming to a stop from the sprint he'd picked up and began spinning around looking for the source of those terrible noises. The streets were silent, still as the heart of a corpse.

Robin opened his mouth to call out Raven's name once again but paused. What if… what if it hadn't been Raven? What if it was the Man in Black? Raven had been fine the last time he'd seen her. She had been better than fine, she'd been the one that had found him after his fugue. The more Robin considered what had just occurred the more convinced he became that it had been a trick, the more convinced he became that he had to leave now, to run before the dark man grew tired of his games and came forward. If Robin didn't let the team know what he'd seen, what he knew, than his City would be left defenseless. He needed Cyborg to help him figure out what the man in black was using the chemicals he'd been storing for. He needed Beast Boy, Raven and Starfire to help him locate the Man in Black, to take him down once and for all with no chance of failure.

Turning from the market Robin began jogging silently, rolling on the pads of his feet to break their noise. He leapt from the sidewalk down to the shoreline seven feet below and bent his knees slightly to absorb his fall. He began walking toward the water line pulling out his transmitter to make contact with Cyborg when he felt something cold, something gross and slimy slither around his ankle. Appalled, Robin made a _yek _sound and leapt forward out of the slimy thing's grasp. He turned around and looked into the black eyes of a dead man. Recoiling horrified, Robin jumped back away from the atrocity. But the man wasn't moving, his eyes weren't black and his hand was lying at his side. He was a normal corpse, probably moved here looking for a pretty view of the ocean before the plague stole him away. Feeling shaky, Robin stared at the man almost hoping it would twitch, because if it twitched, than it would mean that Robin wasn't hallucinating again. But the corpse stayed put, and Robin felt a tiny groan escape his mouth. He turned away from the body and took a step forward but just as he went to step forward that slimy hand grasped his ankle and this time Robin fell forward.

Rolling over in the sand, Robin stumbled to his feet and made a running charge towards the sea. He didn't look back towards the body but kept his eyes trained forward. The thought that he was hallucinating enough to trip himself, that he didn't have complete control of himself was agony to him. He felt helpless, useless. He hit the water and the cold lanced up his legs like fire, but he kept running. He kept running until the water was up to his waist and his lungs were constricting from the shock of the cold water and then he dived head first under the waves. As the dawn broke through the horizon and lit the city of ruins, Robin swam like a madman towards the silhouetted form of the Tower towards the open arms of his team, where they'd do everything to cure him. It was time to rally the team, time to make their stand. As the deep red morning sun rose slowly in the distant sky, Robin swam away from the single place he was most needed at that moment. Away from Raven.

ooooooooooooooooooooooo

Beast Boy sat in with Starfire watching her struggle as air was pushed into her frail lungs with the hook-ups that Cyborg had her on. She looked so frail compared to her usual resilient self, devoid of life. Beast Boy missed her enthusiasm and joy. He wished she would wake for just a moment so he could show her his little kitten form and make her smile, and that way she'd feel better and he wouldn't be so wracked with guilt for taking so long to find her. That way if she passed on she would have had a moment of happiness. That way she wouldn't go in the same fear and desperation that the rest of the city was falling to.

Beast Boy reached up and irritatedly swiped away a tear. He would never say anything to the team about it, but the plague was having a terribly harsh effect of the animals of Jump City, if not worse, and he felt a deep ache reaching out for his kindred spirits. Once the children fell sick, the dogs no longer seemed important and they got scurried out on the streets to fend for themselves. The cat wanted too much attention and got ushered outside. The zoo employees stopped going to work and the animals stopped getting fed. The city stank with as much animal suffering as it did human, and all he was doing now, all he possibly could do now, was provide comfort to his team. Because they were the city's last hope, and the survival of everything depended on them pulling together, one team member at a time. Once they pulled through with Starfire they would search out Robin and then Raven and when they were finally together, when they were strong and impassable they would stand before the Man in Black that was responsible for so much death.

As Beast Boy sat melancholy and brooding, Starfire began to stir. First simple twitching, such as her fingers and toes. But soon she was moving restlessly beneath her sheets and eventually her eyes snapped open. Beast Boy was slow in noticing the movement but when her eyes opened he was on his feet beside her side before he'd realized she was awake. However as soon as Beast Boy got a good look at her, looked into her deep green eyes he knew that something wasn't right.

He looked at her anxious and said "Hey Star? You ok?" Starfire didn't respond but her eyes moved toward him. He couldn't pinpoint what was wrong with them but something was different. Like a new set of eyes set in her face. Beast Boy moved closer and leaned close.

"Starfire," he said hoping to draw her attention. She continued to stare up at him for a few seconds and then, "Beast Boy." Her voice was all wrong. Deep, dark. Something he'd expect from a dark witch. Nevertheless he smiled at her relieved.

"Cyborg's workin' on yer cure right now. Everything's gonna be ok," he told her. She stared up at him and repeated his name.

"Yea it's me Star," Beast Boy said, a growing unease setting in his gut.

"Help me," she said. Beast Boy smiled encouragingly.

"We're comin' up with a cure Star, yer gonna be ok." But Starfire was shaking her head. Beast Boy couldn't look away from her eyes. What was wrong with them?

Beast Boy didn't become aware of the growing rumbling until it was as loud as the volume of his voice. It was deep, like unbroken thunder, and it seemed to be coming all around him at once. He glanced up to find the source of the noise slightly alarmed but Star reached up and grasped his arm. She drew him back to her eyes and Beast Boy suddenly thought that they looked like Raven's. They were Raven's eyes only green, and Starfire was wearing them. The thunder continued to rise and once again Starfire asked for help. Beast Boy stared down at her helpless.

"Star…" he began feeling as though he were talking to the wrong person, "we're doing everything we can…." Starfire shook her head and her eyes flashed a bright white. Beast Boy was now staring into Raven's deep violet eyes and that thundering noise continued to rise around him. Starfire opened her mouth and screamed a terrified wail, filled with confusion and fear and panic. Beast Boy's eyes widened and he felt a growing fear well up in his chest. The noise, the thunderous sound, was at an earsplitting level and Starfire continued to scream.

She cut her wail off with two words, "HELP MEEE!" There was a flash of Raven's dark magic and the noise cut off. Starfire lay comatose on the bed as before, but this time Beast Boy wasn't sitting next to her hoping she'd awake. This time Beast Boy lay on the ground in a comatose state similar to her own.

oooooooooooooooooooooooo

"He's back!" Robin gasped stumbling forward. "I saw him! I spoke to him! He's back!" He reeled forward and landed palms flat on the ground. Cyborg, eyes widened, rushed forward and kneeled down next to him grasping his shoulders. Robin was frozen and shivering violently, soaked to the bone. "He's Back!" Robin coughed out staring intently into Cyborg's eyes, willing him to understand. Cyborg felt elated with the return of his leader. He badly wanted to know what had happened to him but he didn't want to question him while he was unstable.

Attempting to calm Robin down he asked quietly "_Who's_ back?" Robin's eyes faded from focus, pupils widening and then refocusing. He seemed to be on the verge of shock. Cyborg moved to get him to the hospital wing not expecting any more words from him but as soon as he shifted robin's hand shot up and grasped his arm.

"Slade" he said. Cyborg was startled… he hadn't heard Robin mention Slade's name in months. He didn't think he was still having anxieties about him. He shifted back on the balls of his feet and carefully chose his words to keep Robin calm.

"Listen man, I think some one's been messing with out minds. Raven's lost control of her emotions and Beast Boy had a hallucination and you were having those fugues. I don't think we should be trustin' anything we see right now-" Robin's eyes narrowed and he cut him off.

"I know what I saw!" he said sharply. "I… I am seeing things but… but this wasn't like that. The Man in Black said he was partnered with him. He saw him too! He introduced him to me. It's not just me seeing him, I _know _he's back!" Robin's eyes faded from angry to desperate, begging Cyborg to believe him.

Cyborg shook his head gently. "Man, you know Slade only works for himself unless he needs somethin'. The Man in Black doesn't have the powers Trigon had to offer him. What would Slade want to gain from a partnership with him?" Robin was starting to shake more violently and Cyborg was afraid that if he didn't get him to the med bay soon he was going to fall into shock from whatever he'd just been through. However Robin would see nothing of moving.

"I don't know what he wants or why he's back but he is and we need to stop them! We need to call the team together." He said. Cyborg looked down sadly at him.

"Dude… we're it." He said quietly. "Raven's gone. I cant find her anywhere in the tower. Star's sick with the disease and I found Beast Boy in some sort of coma a little while ago. It's just you and me." Robin's brow furrowed in confusion. His mind was beginning to slow from lack of sleep and stress and what Cyborg was saying didn't make any sense. Them… all that was left of the team? Impossible. They were too strong for that. They were always together. That was how it worked, that was why he'd chosen them for the Titans.

"But…" he started. And then what Cyborg said hit him. A deep fear overtook him and he stared back at Cyborg. "Raven's gone?" he asked, voice cracking. Cyborg nodded his head and Robin attempted to jump to his feet.

"He has her!" he cried, struggling against Cyborg's attempts to keep him down. Cyborg didn't know what Robin was talking about but he did know that he needed to go to the med bay five minutes ago. He took hold of Robin's shoulders stopping him from getting up and looked him in the eyes.

"Dude, you need to get to the meds." He said. Robin's eyes unfocused and he shook his head.

"He has her! The Man in Black has her!" Cyborg paused, his attention momentarily caught by Robin's words.

"How do you know?" he asked unwilling to believe him.

"I heard her," he said. "I- I thought I was hallucinating but if she's gone than he has her." Cyborg felt questions rising quickly in his mind, questions of where his leader had been and questions of how he knew what he did, but he knew that he believed Robin. He knew that Raven was with the Black Man.

That fear that had temporarily lifted when the Bat had showed up was snagged back and slammed into his gut full-force. He realized for the first time that it wasn't the plague that he'd been fearing this whole time, not the disappearance of his friends or the death of his city. It was the prospect of facing the man responsible for it all, and the time for that was dropping upon them like a hawk swooping down on its helpless prey.

oooooooooooooooooooooo

Batman frowned deeply and leaned over the microscope unbelieving. The existence of the virus, devouring the chunk of tissue he'd placed in the slide along side it for experimental reasons, wasn't possible. The more he monitored it, the more its strictly physical being was proved wrong, proved an impossibility. The organism lacked fundamental attributes. Organelles required for certain functions that the virus had been using to attack its victims were absent. Requirements for the very continued existence of the life of the virus, organelles responsible for cellular respiration, for signal transitions through the nucleus were absent as well. The virus before him wasn't alive. He'd thought about it long and hard and he'd realized that the only explanation for the plague was that it was a poison, a chemical disguised as a virus. Batman had never seen anything like it before, and its existence made him nervous.

He brooded over the virus silently, staring down at it through the microscope. The chemical was probably created for biological warfare. Disguised as a virus, the people would make the same mistake he'd been about to use, attempting to kill something that wasn't alive, until eventually the target was wiped out. It explained why Jump City's research scientists had failed in creating a cure for it. They'd most likely skipped the deep research of the virus and gone to the core of the problem, how to kill it, missing the fact that it wasn't alive entirely.

Though Batman was now aware of what he was up against, there were still answers he needed to come up with. For instance, if the chemical before him wasn't a plague, than what had caused the death of the thousands of people in Robin's city? He'd seen the effects of the disease himself in that underground research facility. The people had looked ravished with disease, wasted and rotted away as Captain Red had eaten its way through their bodies. But Captain Red wasn't a plague, it was a chemical compound. He needed to figure out the reaction it had with human cells, and apparently Tamaranian cells. Whatever the alien girl and the earthlings had in common was probably the enzyme that was setting off the chemical reactions. Possibly it caused hallucinations or somehow tampered with the brain. Batman paused on that thought and considered. Malfunctions in the nervous system could cause phantom pain, a flaring of a sore throat and stomach cramps. It could trigger overproduction of mucus and cause a stuffy nose and violent coughing as the body tried to excel developing phlegm. And death… death was probably the repercussion of high levels and concentrations of the chemical in the body. The people of Jump City were dying because the human body can't handle an excess level of virtually any chemical compound, be it iron or calcium or simple molecules breathed in every minute of every day. Too much was deadly.

He paused in consideration. It was also possibly, he thought, that the body had made the same assumption that he'd made. That it had developed white blood cells with the intention of wiping out the virus, and the white blood cells had inevitably consumed the chemicals to kill it, effectively wiping themselves out. With the immune system down, the people of Jump City could have begun to die from much simpler causes. A splinter that turned gangrenous, a small cold, the flu. The chemical would have had the same effect on its victim that AIDS has on its.

Batman threw a dirty look at the data he'd been gathering. With his recent discovery none of it would be required. He didn't need a poison for Red's Disease, he needed to develop a chemical that would react with it and wipe it clean from the body. The good news however was that a chemical was much easier to wipe out than a virus was. His anxieties of failure were virtually wiped out. He would create a cure, and the city's people would be saved. As far as Batman could see, there was nothing standing between him and the saving of Jump City. Where the virus had once stood was a simple man-made poison, and once he distributed a cure throughout the city it would be wiped clean. The Man in Black however knew differently. If the Bat thought it was going to be _that_ easy, he was sorely mistaken.

ooooooooooooooooooo

_Ha._

_The night was thick and hot as hell. Robin was alone, waiting for something. For someone. His head was light and he was having troubles putting thoughts together._

_Ha._

_He felt high, like he'd overdosed on painkillers after a particularly nasty fight. His body felt light and weightless. If he tried, he bet he could fly off the building he was standing on._

_Ha. Ha._

_He turned and saw Cyborg kneeling over the building looking down at the city streets. Robin took a step forward and nearly tottered over. He stumbled to a stop and compensated with yelling toward him._

"_Hey Cyborg!" he started. Cyborg glanced up from the streets and gestured over the building._

"_Down there," he said. He stood up from his kneeling position and took a step forward, off the edge of the building. Robin stared, his mind twisting in on itself. He still had that light high feeling but it was wrapped with the deep feeling that Cyborg probably shouldn't have done that…._

_Ha._

_Robin stumbled toward the edge that Cyborg had been standing on. Down there. He was nearly half way there when a dark-glowing cookie floated in front of him. Trippy._

"_Cookie?" he heard Raven offer. He stared at the cookie. A sliver of darkness appeared in front of him and Raven stepped down from it. She gestured over her shoulder towards the wall that Cyborg had stepped off of._

"_Over there," she whispered. Robin furrowed his brow in puzzlement._

"_What's over there?" he asked. Raven shrugged, turned around and sprinted off the building. She swan-dived over the edge and out of sight. Robin stared after her confused._

_Ha. Ha. Ha._

_Robin was feeling queasy. He continued stumbling toward the edge, grasping for reality but finding it just beyond his reach. The edge seemed to loom in front of him like a growing shadow. It beckoned to him, a gesturing finger, pulled him with magnetic attraction. He stumbled and tipped forward onto his palms just before the edge. He glanced over the side and stared into the face of the Man in Black. The dark man's mouth split into a cheery grin and he started laughing at him._

_Hahahahahahaha…._

_Robin reeled backwards and stumbled against someone's torso. Whoever it was enclosed him with muscular arms and squeezed an immense bear hug, compressing the air from his lungs. Robin gasped and struggled against the hold. He rammed his elbow just below the rib cage and ripped himself from the man's grasp when it loosened. He spun around and Slade stood casting his inky shadow across the building roof. His mask melted off and the Man in Black stood before him._

"_Who is who, who is who? I don't know, I just can't tell anymore," the Man in Black said shrugging his shoulders. He held up a cookie grinning. "Wanna cookie?"_

"_What the fu-" Robin started. The Man in Black's face distorted and the disfigured image of Two-Face stared at him._

"_Fate is what drives us. Good and evil acts aren't decided on the whim of the person, but by what drives us. Fate." His twisted face split into a grin and he held up a pistol. "Wanna see your parents?" he offered. Robin's eyes widened and for a moment that high, elated feeling was replaced with a deep rage, coursing through his veins like hot lead. Two-Face pulled the trigger and Robin heard a thump as something fell to the floor behind him. He turned around and the Man in Black was lounging on the ground before him, blood coursing from a wound high on his chest._

"_Well ain't that just the darndest thing?" he said shaking his head. "My favorite jacket, gettin' bled all over." Robin narrowed his eyes._

"_You won't win," Robin said. The Man in Black looked startled and then barked out a laugh. _

"_I won't win? Hey kid I don't know if you've noticed but I think the score of the game proves I'm doin' a little better than'ya." He pointed out. Robin shook his head._

"_No. We've been through worse than anything _you_ could manage. We've beaten worse than you. You can't win." The Man in Black's eyes narrowed and he remained quiet for a moment. Robin felt the drug feeling wearing off, and stabilized his balance. The Man in Black slowly stood up from the ground, floating with an inhumane grace. He stood looking at Robin with cold, distant eyes and when he spoke, it was with a voice much more terrifying than his previous, filled with malice and wrath and something deeper. Something ancient and undying. An evil, pure and exotic from that which Robin had witnessed before._

"_There is no one that can destroy me child. No thing that will rid you of me, rid you from my hold on this city. No strategy you can find to break my barriers. I've been here long before you entered this world, and I'll be here long after. You're not fighting the corrupt and villainous anymore little Robin, you're fighting the reason they exist. You're bad memories… I share them, and I revel in them. Every nightmare you've had, I was there, hidden in the shadows beyond eyesight. Every fight you had with they whom you hate so much, I wrought out the iron punches. You think you've met evil? You haven't even seen the tip of it, and I am the entity that encompasses all. The very first, and the very last, and you will never defeat me." _

_Hahahahahahahahahaha._

_Robin stared the Man in the Black straight in the eyes and for the first time since he'd first heard of the plague he felt a serene calm peruse through his mind. He took a deep breath and said, "Maybe you're right. Maybe there's nothing I can do to crack your hold on my city," he paused and straightened his shoulders. His head tipped up, held high, and his glare hardened. "But when the time comes we'll be there, the titans will hold on the front lines. We'll make our stand and whatever powers you have will have to defeat us to take this city." The Man in Black stared down at Robin and cracked a smile._

"_Sounds lik'a party," he said. The dark man started a sick, twisted giggle, high-pitched and inhuman. He seemed to be sharing in his own private joke and when he turned back to Robin his eyes held a gleeful amusement. He said, "Oh… and by the way, you might wanna check on your other wittle birdy titan. Cause last I saw of her… well she was standing right next to me offering her powers," he shrugged helpless. "Now I'm not sayin' yer wrong… just that you may wanna check with your titans before you go volunteerin' them about." Robin narrowed his eyes unbelieving and the man in black waved a cheery good-bye. The lights blinked out and_

Robin's eyes snapped open. He felt lightheaded and it took a moment for him to realize where he was. He found he was in a bed, covered with soft sheets and upon further looking he realized he was in the med bay. He stopped and laid against his pillow reflecting on his dream. Had Raven really gone to the Man in Black by free will? Robin wasn't sure he was willing to believe that after hearing her cry. It was too filled with fear and confusion. But somehow the Black Man had gotten a hold of her, and they had to get her back. Because the more he thought about it the more Robin became more and more aware that if they pulled together, if they held strong, they would win. The Man in Black knew it as well. It was why he'd sent his message, because he was afraid. And as the time ticked down to their final confrontation, Robin felt the same calm he'd felt in his dream well up in his mind. If they pulled together… the Man in Black didn't stand a chance.


	8. Chapter 7

Hours before Robin returned to the Tower with news of the Man in Black, Raven lay entirely still in a Tower hospital bed. The room was abandoned and silent, as Cyborg and Beast Boy were at that moment searching for Starfire, and a calm serenity drifted quietly through the air, but inside Raven was a torrent of vehemence. For the first time since she was a child Raven's emotions had no boundaries. They crashed through her mind with blinding speed and the force of explosive detonations, unfocused, uncontrolled and completely irrational. She felt rage boiling beneath her skin like glowing hot iron. She felt dark, murderous prowess filtering through her mind with shifting scorn. Awe and fear battled in a fluxion of contradicting motion, while giddy excitement laughed excitedly in the corners of her mind. Suffocating deep within the whirl of emotion was Raven's conscious mind, tiny, weary, and a terrified understanding of her incapability to control her own mind.

Raven could feel the presence of the taint, the darkness that stained the walls that usually contained her powers like a filthy graphitied message. It was dark as the shadows of hell and crawled with a deep ancient malevolence. It squirmed inside her, a tiny splash of something left behind from the Man in Black, something not even intentionally wrought on her mind, but which had the power to crumble her barriers like they were the work of a mere child. Raven was unaware, and the Man in Black was as well for that matter, but the sinisterness of the dark man's mind was something no sane human could bare. Those unlucky enough to have had their minds examined by the Man in Black lay either insane or dead in the distant past. Raven however had her barriers as a temporary buffer against the Man in Black. They had saved her from an immediate degeneration of mind, but try as she might she couldn't scrub her mind clean of the taint he had left behind. She was unaware of her physical body, or what objectives her uncontrolled subconscious was transcribing to perform. She didn't know the repercussions of her uncontrolled powers or where she was. She was caught in her mind beneath the whirlwind of emotions, held prisoner by that splash of darkness leftover from the Man in Black's brief visit.

Raven wondered what craven was capable of such devastation without even consciously attempting to attack. What creature could leave a mark as cruel and catastrophic as what this one had done upon her mind. The repercussions of the taint, the torrent of constant emotion, were exhausting. The raging emotions weren't anything she particularly felt, but every potential feeling she had, anything she was capable of feeling, and the effect of such powerful emotions after years of careful checks and balances towards them was physically sickening.

Eventually Raven's exhaustion took effect and she drifted into a restless sleep, clouded in a thick haze of emotion. It was 11:42 PM when Raven dreamed of the Man in Black. It was 11:56 PM when Raven awoke to her calling and left the tower in a flurry of rage for the capture of her team's leader. It was exactly midnight when Raven stepped outside the Tower doors and breathed in the dark night air.

oooooooooooooooooooooooo

Cyborg had left Beast Boy, Starfire, and Robin in the other room, joining Batman in the research chamber of the Tower. For the first couple minutes he'd waited in silence, watching Batman work. The concentration emanating from the dark knight was almost tangible and Cyborg was afraid that if he interrupted, it would waste precious time in creating the cure that his city, as well as his friend, so desperately needed. Cyborg knew Batman was aware of his presence and he bided his time to hear any news the Bat felt like sharing. After a while Batman turned toward him and Cyborg thought he detected a hint of frustration behind the mask for a split second. It was gone so quickly however that Cyborg wasn't sure he'd even seen it.

"It's not a plague," he said monotonously.

Cyborg stared at him for a moment confused and then, in an impressive lack of wit, said "…what?" Immediately Cyborg kicked himself mentally. Though he had no idea what Batman was talking about, he had a strong impulse to impress the man, and he wished he'd said something more intellectual. _Of course not a plague! That explains this entire mess! I understand completely now, it's not a plague, henceforth the city is saved. With this discovery thousands will be saved Batman, it was so obvious from the beginning! I can see it _clearly_ now… _Batman however didn't give him a chance to put in an impressive comment.

"It's not biological, whatever it is. It's a chemical weapon. Whoever created it designed it to impersonate a virus, hence creating symptoms and the appearance of a plague to fool the attacked into taking the wrong actions against it until they wound up dead."

Cyborg was immensely confused. "Who has the resources to create something _that_ complicated aside from the government?" he scoffed. Batman leveled his gaze on him and raised an eyebrow.

"What makes you dismiss the government as a suspect?" he asked. Cyborg blinked surprised in another show of impressive lack in wit.

"You mean… we're up against the army!" he cried. Batman gazed back, level eyed.

"Maybe."

Silence settled between the two again and Cyborg had time to think about Batman's claim. Things began to click in place, like why the city hadn't been able to come up with a cure, but questions remained. He turned towards Batman and said, "If it's a chemical, how is it the entire city is gettin' sick? When chemicals spread they dilute through the air man. It would have had to'ave been a tank the size of the frikkin city to provide enough poison." For a moment there was a look of praise barely evident behind Batman's mask, but it was gone just as quickly as the frustration had receded. Cyborg once again doubted he'd seen it at all.

"I've been thinking the same thing," Batman started. "There has to be something besides the air that's being contaminated. Something considerably smaller, but spread out through the entire city." Cyborg considered other resources a chemical could travel through but couldn't piece anything together. He looked at Batman helplessly and felt that he was letting him down. He had a brief flash of sympathy for Robin, who'd grown up with such a strong, intelligent model to live up to. Batman turned back to his worktable and picked up a vial of clear liquid.

"I'm almost positive the water is contaminated," he said. Cyborg sighed disappointed with himself… duh the water was contaminated. How'd he miss _that_? He realized he was tuning Batman out and quickly returned his attention.

"- human body is made up of near 80 percent water and I'm guessing the Tamaran is as well. It's probably water that's acting as the enzyme for the chemical reactions, or some compound of water. That would also explain why it spread so quickly… once in the water supply the chemicals were already active when they entered the human system, where it would start its attack and finish up by reacting to the water supplies within the body itself." He paused and glanced over at Cyborg. "If we can flush out the water systems with this," he held up the vial, "then we should thoroughly wipe out the 'plague'."

Cyborg could feel a deep excitement welling within him. They had a cure, and they had a plan to put it into effect. They were going to save Jump City.

The vial hadn't been in Batman's hand for more than a minute when a screeching, inhuman yowl cut through both Batman and Cyborg. Batman had pinpointed the noise immediately, but too late. As he whirled around the thing had already launched itself off the wall, grabbing a vice-like grip on Batman's arm. The vial slipped from Batman's grip as his fingers faltered under the thing's relentless claws, and the cure for Jump City's plight smashed against the tiles, spilling out onto the Tower floor. Cyborg, momentarily shocked, jumped to action and shot the thing with his sonic-cannon and it sprawled to the floor squealing in pain.

"What the heck is it and how'd it get past my security!" Cyborg cried out. Batman was leaning over the thing. It was relatively small, fifteen pounds or so, sickly and deformed, tuffs of hair spouting out at odd angles and its ribs showing profusely through its skin, almost to the point of resembling a walking skeleton. It had skin lesions all over its body and it was filthy.

"I think it's a cat," said Batman. His attention slipped back to the cure he'd spent hours concocting, glancing down at the shattered vial, and he sighed. He'd need to create it all over again. Or perhaps…. He thoughtfully picked up a swab and rubbed it in the mess on the ground. If he could clean out any foreign particles he would be able to duplicate it. He turned back to his chemicals and microscopes and other assorted scientific equipment and quickly became consumed in his work, nearly forgetting about the cat.

Cyborg however was staring disgusted at the sickly creature. There was something unnatural about it. Like it had been driven here, through fear or crazed from starvation or… something else. Cyborg considered picking up the cat and getting rid of it but there was something about it that he couldn't bring himself to touch. It was a good thing too. The cat had indeed been driven to the Tower by a frenzied and primitive instinct that had been implanted by the calls of a very dark man. It had stopped the Bat for now, and that's all it was meant to live for. For now, the Man in Black had more time.

ooooooooooooooooooooooooo

Raven didn't walk but rather floated down 5th Street, her feet an inch or so above the ground, her dark cloak rippling behind her. Her power seeped from her like an elongated shadow during the twilight hour. Inanimate objects leapt aside as she floated by, flashing that chilling black and pushing back with monstrous force, entire cars pushed aside like leaves caught in an autumn wind. She was mentally exhausted, but her body was functioning properly and her powers enthusiastically. Raven was hardly aware of anything other that the stain present in her mind. It had begun to drown out her emotions, her uncontrolled power, any conscious thoughts she may have had. It was dark, so dark, and cold but… but Raven adored the darkness. She thrived in it, she felt she was a part of it. Through the furrows of her emotion-ridden mind, Raven was aware of one thing. The call. The magnetic force that was pulling her towards something downtown, in the old part of the city. The darkness in her mind's comforting call drove her towards the old sector of town, logic and want driven back by that black magnetism.

It was 12:35 AM, and Robin was just escaping the warehouse. At 1:53 AM he was nearing the harbor and at 2:00 AM exactly, Raven caught sight of him. For a moment, the sight of Robin striding down the street, nervous and quick-paced, shocked Raven out of her mind's prison. Logic and realization slammed into her with enough force to drive her to her knees. Unfortunately, though it wasn't the taint in her mind that caused it, her initial realization of what that taint was doing to her raised its own torrent of emotion. Fear for her inability to control herself welled in her chest and she felt her powers gathering around her. She called out to him and she saw him pause and glance around in the street startled. She mentally screamed for him but she felt her control waver and she would have been surprised if he heard her telepathic message at all. Panic began to overtake her as she felt her powers and emotions welling up again, forcing her back. With sheer will Raven shoved back her powers, snatching her control back and pushing the blackness away. Her physical body became aware of the rising sound of her over-usage of power rumbling through the city. Raven had a fleeting thought of how odd that was, because her powers had never made noise before, when her barriers wavered again. As Raven's temporary return to reality slid back beyond the reaches of her mind she cried out in fear, terrified of what she would do without control. Once the darkness overtook her again would she go to the Man in Black for more comforting shadows? Would she walk unaware of her surroundings, driven completely by irrational emotion and thought and desire of the dark? Would she harm innocents? Raven's cry was cut short when she was forced back to the subconscious of her mind. It was 2:06 AM when Raven stood back up from the street, her violet eyes vacant and emaciated, and continued to float inches above the ground down 5th Street towards the Man in Black.

ooooooooooooooooooooooo

Robin was lying motionless in bed attempting to come up with tactics for destroying the Man in Black. So far all he'd accomplished was a bout depression. Raven was in the hands of a mass-murdering psycho killer. Strike telepathic powers. Starfire was sick and comatose. Strike her alien strength and starbolts. Beast Boy was in some weird coma. Strike his… well his flying and brute strength and general sharp pointy teeth and claws. The PD was on the same level with the rest of the populace: sick, dying, dead, or hidden. A bit on the useless side for him, however heartless that felt. The Man in Black had the upper hand in, as far as Robin knew, virtually everything. The dark man had more information, more weapons, and, Robin assumed, more people to fight for him. Though Robin knew where the warehouse was, he didn't know if the dark man would stay there for long and assuming that was were he could find him was foolhardy. All in all they were losing the battle… horribly.

Robin didn't hear Batman enter the room, nor did he see him when he silently strode to his bedside, but he did feel it when the dark knight placed a kind hand on his shoulder and roughly shoved him out of the bed.

"AHH," yelled Robin as he tumbled to the floor. He sat up irritatedly and glared at Batman. "What was that for?" he demanded.

Robin thought there might have been a look of amusement hidden beneath the Bat's mask but it'd been so long since he'd lived with him he had trouble reading his emotions. Batman stared unmoving at Robin and said, "You should be more observant of your surroundings. What if I'd been here to kill you?"

Robin crossed his arms and said, "Well you aren't are you?"

Batman shrugged. "I might," he said pointedly. Robin's glare melted to a look of embarrassment. He started talking in a rush attempting to make Batman understand.

"Um… I know my city's not looking its best right now and neither am I or my team but it's this guy… he's… well I don't know exactly what he's doing but he's got chemicals and he's kidnapped Raven and I think he might have something to do with the plague and he kidnapped _me_…." Batman didn't cut Robin off, but his relentless gaze caused him to stumble over his words and eventually silence himself. "W-what are you doing here?" he ended uncertainly.

Batman looked down at Robin on the floor and the corner of his mouth twitched into the tiniest of sarcastic smiles. He crossed he arms and said, "Well, it would seem that your city's been infected with a plague Robin."

Robin scowled, "Yea, I figured that much out…." He slowly rose from the floor, untangling himself in sheets and brushed himself off. He looked up again and glanced uneasily at Batman. Raising a hand, Batman gestured for Robin to follow him. He turned and walked towards the door, Robin walking quickly to keep up. Before he'd reached the door however Batman turned back towards Robin and pulled him into an embrace. Robin returned it fiercely and the two stood for a moment in each other's arms. Clearing his throat Batman let go and clapped Robin on the shoulder. Without a word the two left the room towards the research facility where Robin was about to learn some startling news concerning Captain Red and Batman was about to learn some equally startling news concerning the Man in Black.

oooooooooooooooooooooooo

It was 2:12 AM. Raven's emotions were beginning to fade, leaving her with a sense of numbness… and something else. Something uncaring and dark and sinister. Raven's initial terror of the taint was beginning to fade and she was starting to find that it wasn't so bad. In a twisted way, the dark spot was comforting. It provided release from the constant stress of the control her powers required. However, at 2:14 AM, Raven spotted a corpse in a vehicle her unleashed powers had cast uncaringly aside. The corpse wasn't anyone Raven had ever met, or anyone particularly important, but atop the corpse's head was a tumble of flaming red hair. Albeit the disease had diminished the woman's hair to a scraggly, unhealthy and diminished look, the color reminded her of Starfire and, for a moment reality slammed back into Raven once again.

Driven back down to her knees Raven screamed in rage. She clawed at the air, ripped her nails through nothing and fought off the taint's effects like a savage beast. Her animalistic behavior would have disgusted her had she been in a right state of mind, but Raven continued to fight for control with a ferocity she never showed her adversaries in crime-fighting. She screamed and howled and beat her fists bloody against the street, shoving the blackness back to the recesses of her mind. At 2:17 AM Starfire's eyes snapped open and she turned to Beast Boy to ask for help.

Raven could feel her control slipping back again and she felt an overwhelming sense of despair overtake her. If she couldn't reach her team, they wouldn't know she was in trouble, and she would be left all alone. With sheer force of will Raven slammed the taint back again and screamed for help. She wailed in sorrow and anger and as the blackness overtook her once again she burst with a wave of black light. The windows of the car containing the red-haired corpse imploded with a shattering crash and, at 2:20 AM, Beast Boy dropped to the floor as a wall of uncontrolled black light slammed through his mind. Raven stood from the asphalt, her knees bloodied from her fall, and continued on.

ooooooooooooooooooooooo

Steve stood uneasily in front of the crowd. He wasn't quite sure what he was planning on saying but he knew it needed to be done. The people were scattered and confused and scared. If they weren't gathered then chaos would break out and more people would end up hurt. This needed to be done and he was the only one willing to do it. Slowly he held up his hands and the crowd quieted.

Clearing his throat, Steve started, "Um… thanks for coming everyone." He paused looking into the faces of the people before him. They were broken, scared… but they weren't wiped out. Whatever force had entered their lives with the intentions of ending them had failed, and they would rise to meet it. They would find their strength.

"We're here because we've been forced here," he began. "Forced here… by Red's Disease. Forced here by the government's abandonment of us. Forced here by the deaths of our loved ones…" he paused bowing his head. The crowd had grown into a near tangible silence in pained mourning. Steve continued.

"I know that we're feeling lost and that some of us are feelin' pain beyond anything we should have to. But we can't allow ourselves to stay down. We have… we gotta take a hand and stand back up because if we stay down then," Steve gulped and wiped sweat from his brow. "Then we're no better than those before us that fell to outside powers. We're no better then the Germans a' fore World War II that allowed Hitler to commend them to the holocaust. We're no better than the writers and leaders that created the treaty of Versailles. We're no better then the people that firs' decided slavery was ok. We're no better then… then a pack of wild beasts." Steve paused glancing around at his audience, watching him intently. He wiped the sweat from his brow again and continued.

"But we _are_ better than those people. That's why our children learn that stuff in school about history, that's why _we_ bothered to learn it. So that… so that it would stick and we'd learn from it. So that when something happens, something like this plague, we'd know what to do. We'd know how to act. And now, we know that we need to come together. We need to put up comities to clean out the bodies before they start to deteriorate and spread even more disease. We need to contact the government officials and see what's happening with a cure..." Steve stopped once more staring out at Jump City's people. Something in the audience… someone… had caught his attention. A pair of eyes… staring out from beneath a black top hat. But they disappeared so quickly that Steve was almost entirely certain he'd made them up.

Clearing his throat Steve continued speaking. He spoke of putting together a council to make decisions in the interest of the people and starting up cleaning crews to pick up bodies and dispose of them. He spoke of getting together a group to get the power back up in the city and he spoke of a group to make contact with people outside the city and a group to locate other survivors. But all the while as he spoke he could feel those eyes burning into him. He couldn't see them, but he felt them staring intently upon his person. Steve began to pick up a stutter, slight but present in his speech and he kept having to reach up to wipe sweat from his brow.

For a moment, the people of Jump City felt like their lives were back in their hands. As they watched Steve, former manager of Ed's Bike Shop, they felt the immense weight of the uncontrolled circumstances in their lives lift from their shoulders. For a moment, the people of Jump City had a chance of surviving Captain Red on their own. But as Steve began his conclusion, hoping to effectively wrap things up, those eyes grew in intensity and Steve knew that the man that owned the eyes was on the stage. Turning around Steve stared into the face of an ageless man. A man dressed entirely in black with the grinning face of one amused and cheerful and carefree. By impulse Steve stepped down from his position and smiling widely the Man in Black stepped in front of the crowd. For a moment there was puzzled silence as the people looked up at this new man, but someone started up a hesitant applaud of approval and people soon followed. This man, whoever he was, had something charming and calming about him and as the people of Jump City stared into the face of death, the Man in Black smiled out at them in satisfied content.

ooooooooooooooooooooooo

Raven was now floating up G Street, nearing the old sector of town. The difference between the old and new parts of Jump City was as clear as the difference of day and night. Upon entering the oldest parts of Jump City the streets became twisted and winding, the rapidity of the City's growth evident in the unplanned, almost random placement of buildings, streets, and houses. In the way alleyways ended abruptly in dead ends and how streets went from heavily used, bright roads to dank pavement flanked with high brick buildings on both sides blocking out morning and afternoon sunlight, saving none but the high noon for brief visitation of direct light.

Raven floated down the ancient thoroughfare, unaware and uncaring of her surroundings, journeying merely for the prospect of that darkness at the end, calling her. She'd been wondering for hours, witnessing the harsh change in temperature as the night took its coldest hours and then warmed as the sun touched the far horizon. The usual morning traffic didn't pick up and the City remained as silent and quiet as the deepest part of the night.

It was late morning, 11:27 AM. The day had been burnt away as Raven had slowly, tantalizingly unhurried, floated across the city. She had no reason to move, no reason to think or do anything because that little black smudge was so comforting it made her want to crawl up in a far corner of her mind and sleep, but that call, that magnetic impulse, drew her near like a firm clamp on her arm pulling her towards it. She was hardly aware of anything around her except for that call.

At 11:58 Raven paused. Her eyes had by chance rolled and landed on an old, bright blue Cadillac smashed up against a street lamp. The front of the car was twisted from the collision and the front hood was crinkled up, exposing the engine inside. As Raven stared at the mechanics something stirred deep within her subconscious. Gears, electronics, pipes, engine… Cyborg! Raven gasped and once again took control of herself. This time however her return to reality was so short-lived that she barely had time to register where she was before she was caught once again in the torrent of the Man in Black's touch upon her mind. It was high noon exactly when Raven, for the last time, struggled valiantly against the disintegrating effect the dark man was having upon her psyche, and failed, finally succumbing to the darkness within her.


	9. Chapter 8

Robin stared at the picture of Captain Red. Drugs… chemical weaponry. Somehow the thought of the virus was much more disturbing knowing that it was man-made, created with the intentions of destroying actual populaces. Robin sighed. Those sons'a bitches had done _much _too good a job on this weapon for his liking.

"So… none of this is a disease? Its all just poison from the Man in Black?" Robin asked.

Batman nodded, "Yes. It looks like there are traces of other chemicals in the water but whatever they were he didn't use them much and they've diluted enough to be harmless since then."

"Yea," Robin said, " those were probably the drugs making me afraid of the dark."

Batman nodded once more and Cyborg added, "Yea dude and Beast Boy's hallucination." Both Robin and Batman looked at him puzzled and he added, "Err… Beast Boy had a hallucination that the Man in Black knocked him unconscious and that he had a head wound and was bleeding all the way back to the tower. Weird stuff, man."

"But with the cure you made we can save anyone that's dying in the city right?" Robin asked Batman. "We can put a stop to all this."

"All we need to do is put it in the water supply to knock out the chemicals already in there and then start spreading it through the city. If we can get it to a functioning medical facility or somehow get a committee up to find every infected person and inject them with a dose of the cure it'll save all but those in the final stages of the deteriorating effect of the chemical," Batman said.

Robin sighed in relief. With Captain Red out of the way all he had to worry about was the Darkman and finding Raven and… Robin paused. Slade… Slade. He was a hallucination. Slade had to have been a hallucination. Slade wasn't back. Slade had never been back. A cold hand pressed against Robin's chest. Slade wasn't back. Slade had never been back. Slade was a hallucination. Slade wasn't back.

That fact wasn't as comforting as Robin would have expected. That a Man could have dug into his fear straight through his barriers to the very man that he thought he might fear the most sent shivers up his spine. He'd believed him. He'd believed Slade was back after only seeing him for less than a minute, and he'd believed it up until it was scientifically proved wrong. The Man in Black had manipulated him like he was a helpless child. He'd crumbled their team with ease before they'd even known he'd existed. He'd brought Jump City to its knees with a single crushing blow and a flick of his wrist. This man had wrought more damage on them than any other villain they'd battled henceforth, and the Teen Titans hadn't even battled him as a team yet. Robin shuddered. The calm and confidence he'd felt the night before seemed further away than the farthest reaches of the universe. They were gonna win against the Man in Black? Yea right… or die trying.

ooooooooooooooooooooo

It had been hours since the cure had entered Starfire's bloodstream. All three of the people responsible for the cure's presence in Starfire's body were within the perimeter of her sick room, and were terribly nervous. Cyborg's eyes hadn't left her vitals screen in nearly two hours. Robin was pacing back and forth and Batman stood deeply hidden in the shadows of the far corner of the bay, his eyes cast to the ground. The reason for their intense nervousness was because, in essence, Starfire was acting as an experiment. Although none of them would like to have admitted it, Starfire was the first to receive treatment and it was whether her body responded or not that was what would determine them administering it to the rest of the population. If the drugs didn't respond correctly with the virus than there was a possibility that Batman would have to take anywhere from several hours to several days to figure out the flaws and correct them, and by that time thousands more in the city could die, including Starfire. The single most important thing the titans were hoping to win back was time. There was nothing they could do further for Jump City other than to stop the death, which meant they had to waste as little time as was possible in finding a cure.

Starfire lay dying on the bed, her insides slowly dissolving from a biologically developed chemical. Batman stared forward deep within his mind, as scared for the survival of Jump City as he'd ever been for Gotham. Robin paced, his heart eating away at itself as his team mate, one of his best friends, lay dying in the same room as he, with him having nothing further he could do for her. Cyborg felt that inhuman tug of weariness as his power storage in his battery slowly ticked down, but refusing to budge his eyes from Starfire's vital signs. As the night progressed and the seconds ticked past the night outside the tower deepened until it broke through into dawn. Jump City's mortalities continued to rise, the Man in Black furthered his plotting, and Batman, Robin, and Cyborg waited, and waited, and waited.

oooooooooooooooooooo

Antoine was roaring up the interstate back towards Jump City having just respectively and successfully snuck outside the City limits in order to obtain certain weapons for the man he'd come to know as 'The Boss'. He was zooming at a steady 97 mph and had been for about an hour. He'd killed four people in four days and had picked up a nervous twitching glance towards his mirrors every so often checking for cops, although the nervous glances weren't entirely for the murders he'd committed. Antoine was most worried about the guns. Hidden in various places within the car Antoine was carrying a small arsenal. Ten .38s, twelve .45s, seven .357 Magnums, six shotguns, four Schmeisser submachine guns, and three M-16s. He also had enough ammunition to get through several small battles. He hoped the weaponry was enough. A few others had already raided the military HQ within the city and the police station. They were beginning to gather a respectable array of weapons when Antoine left the city to obtain more weapons for The Boss, and now with the collection of guns he had with them they would be able to effectively wipe out any threat towards the boss without so much as a fuss. Fuck yea.

Jack was sitting next to Antoine, his fingers twitching nervously in his lap with a high expression on his face. It wasn't that he was high; Antoine thought that was just Jack's regular expression. He had small beady eyes set in a hard, broad face and when he frowned he was enough to set anyone stumbling backwards in intimidated stutters. Antoine wasn't ever frightened of Jack though. No. He knew of someone _much _more intimidating than Jack….

Jack shifted and put a heavy leather boot up on the dashboard leaning back into the squishy chair of the old car.

"Hey man I hope da Boss gives us somethin' ta'do with all this shit," Jack said referring to the guns. "I love a good shootin' scene."

Antoine didn't say anything. Truth was he hated hauling all the metal. Since the Man in Black had showed up there'd been a weird feeling going through the air, violence and the like. He didn't feel like the government or law system really meant anything to anyone anymore. The people of Jump City seemed to have forgotten civil law, what it was like to be humane.

Antoine sighed. He continued to drive up the interstate highway, the arsenal weighing heavy in the back of the car as well as on his heart, and Jack (who occasionally enjoyed comparing his self to Jack the Ripper) sitting next to him growing more and more eager for the bloodshed to begin in the name of Da Boss.

ooooooooooooooooooooo

At 5:39 AM, Starfire's fever broke. At 5:57 AM her coughing faded. Her congestion cleared 40 minutes later. At 6:27 AM Starfire's eyes snapped open and she peered through a layer of grogginess into three hopeful sets of anxious eyes. Starfire was cured.

Starfire had hardly been conscious for half an hour before Batman was gone. The Titans spent a spare precious moments discussing their options. Eventually, they'd decided on Batman doing everything and anything to get the cure out to the open, while Robin, Cyborg, and Starfire would make their way to the warehouse Robin had been captured in to find any leads of the whereabouts of the Man in Black, as well as Raven. The plan was efficient, and understood. At 7:15 AM Batman, Robin, Cyborg and Starfire left the Tower with their minds set on the final hours of the plague the Man in Black had brought with him. Or rather what they hoped would be the final hours. Da Boss had other plans.

oooooooooooooooooooo

Beast Boy woke with a start. He shot up in bed, his eyes blurring and refocusing as he attempted to recognize where he was. He squinted around the room and his mind reeled in confusion. He reached a hand up to his throbbing head and an IV tugged on his wrist. An IV… he stared at it until it hit him. He was in the med bay. He was in the meds hooked up to an IV.

Tugging the IV out Beast Boy swung his legs over the edge of the bed. He couldn't remember why he was here. In fact… he couldn't remember anything from the past few days (or what he assumed had been days). There was a veil covering his memories. He could make out some images, but they were blurry and distorted. Shaking his head to clear the grogginess he looked back up around the room hoping to see one of the Titans, but he was alone. Slipping off the mattress he placed his bare-feet on the cold tiled floor and slowly walked towards the door. Why was he here? He wished he could remember.

The door slid open as he walked up to it and he slipped from the room quietly. The Tower seemed colder and quieter than he remembered… almost haunted. Sliding his hand along the wall he made his way down the corridor, unsure of where he was going. He came to the end of the hall and a door slid open with a hiss. He walked in and the room was cold and dark and quiet. His breathing suddenly sounded loud and harsh and he could hear his heart beating clearly in the still air.

Peering through the darkness Beast Boy saw what looked like research and lab equipment. Scopes, tubes, beakers…. Stumbling over his foot he reached forward and grasped the edge of a table, casting his eyes to the ground. He took a sharp intake of breath as his eyes came to rest on a furry something huddled on the ground. For a moment Beast Boy was almost lost to the grogginess clouding his mind but he pulled control of himself and lucid thought returned. He shifted his eyes to an owl's and the room sharpened into focus as he used his night vision. The furry mass was what looked like a cat. A very dead cat. Beast Boy felt grief tug at his heart. The cat had died a horrible death, its body mangled and distorted. However Beast Boy sensed something wrong with it. Something that was tainting it even after death. A dark shadow seeping from its very being. Beast Boy only then realized that he'd accidentally slipped entirely into the form of an owl and he ruffled his feathers and clicked his claws against the ground as he stared at the cat. He wanted it out of the Tower but he didn't want to touch it. Cyborg had intended on getting rid of it earlier but for some reason it'd slipped his mind almost immediately after he'd taken his eyes from it, just as it'd done the same for Batman, who would never have normally allowed a dead body to reside in the room he was researching and doing chemical experimentation in.

Beast Boy however couldn't tear his eyes from the cat, and he also couldn't leave it here. He hopped forward a step before remembering once again he was an owl and transformed back into his human shape. He reached forward with his purple- gloved hand and placed his fingers on the scruff of his neck. He shuddered violently. There was definitely something wrong with it. Darkness oozed out of it like a corporeal entity, something terrifying and dark and prodigious. He picked up the cat and he wanted nothing more than to drop it and run from this place tainted by its presence but still he clung to its matted fur, making his way out into the corridor. He stumbled his way all the way to the entrance way and out the door, all the while his mind reeling with the need to get away. He stumbled out among the rocks towards the shoreline and when he reached the dark water frothing against the coast he released the corpse of the cat that the Man in Black had temporarily possesed and it fell into the dark oily water with a plop. Beast Boy stumbled back away from it turning back towards the door. That was when his memories returned.

Dropping to the ground Beast Boy gasped as the images streamed into his mind like a roaring freight train. Not good memories of living with the Titans as he'd expect but horrific, graphic memories of disease-ridden bodies and dying people succumbing to Captain Red. Memories of riots and car crashes and people falling dead in the streets. Memories of Starfire gasping for breath on the medical bed and Cyborg fighting back grief as he attempted to find a cure and Robin getting knocked down by the kid in black while he stood by useless. Memories of the dinosaur-man and of Batman and of… of the Man in Black. For the first time since Terra's death Beast Boy allowed himself to let his grief overtake him. Tears streamed down his face in uncontrolled bouts of sobbing and he leaned over digging his palms into his eyes. He wept and cried and wailed his sorrow. It was the last time any titan would have to grieve for the dead before the end.

ooooooooooooooooooooo

Starfire, Robin and Cyborg strode down 5th street, having just entered the old section of town. The shadows lengthened and leapt eerily out and Robin felt a different paranoia than what he'd started to become accustomed to. He wasn't afraid of the dark… he was scared that the drugs were going to kick back in and he was going to lose control. The three titans walked in silence, a tension growing in the air around them but a comfort still tangible between them. Robin was leading, growing steadily tenser as he neared the warehouse that he'd been captured in, but he kept his shoulders straight and his head high. He didn't want Cyborg or Starfire to pick up on his nervousness.

Within the hour the titans came upon the warehouse, a looming, dark gray building with a vacated lot to one side and more storage units to the other. It was obviously abandoned with dust settled on the handles of the huge wooden front doors and cobwebs obstructing areas that would normally be frequented. A line of windows lined the top of the warehouse near the roof, but the windows were filthy, layered over in dust and dirt.

Robin regarded the warehouse for a moment and then moved towards the door. Everything looked like no one had entered for a few days but he was still weary. He grabbed the handle and inched the door forward, leaning against the dusty wood to glance inside. Nothing moved. Pushing the door open more he felt Cyborg and Starfire move in behind him. The door led into a huge storage chamber with high cement walls and old, musty crates piled sporadically on top of each other in tall towers.

Robin turned to Starfire, "could you fly up there and scout out the room Star?" he whispered into the silence. Starfire murmured a yes and drifted slowly towards the ceiling. She paused floating serenely over a stack of wooden boxes, peering around the room with alien green eyes, and then a gun shot like an explosion and a chunk of the heavy cement ceiling shattered above Starfire's head. She cried out and fell directly on top of the stack of crates, which wobbled precariously under her unconscious weight.

Cyborg grabbed Robin by the shoulder and forcefully dragged him behind a stack of wooden beams covered in a thick layer of cobwebs.

"No," said Cyborg forcefully. "They have guns! We can't deal with guns without Raven! How are we supposed to disarm them?"

"We have no choice," Robin said quietly, straining his ears to make sure no more shots were being taken at Starfire.

"We gotta get out of here. We gotta get Star and leave, man, we need a better plan!"

Robin stared at the ground for a moment but his face stayed hard, "We have to find Raven. We need to find the Man in Black. The only way anything's gonna get done is if we actually _do _something. We don't have the option of sitting in the Tower and coming up with plans anymore. We have to fight."

Robin looked up to where Starfire'd fallen, double-checking that she wasn't in any danger of being shot at. He thought she'd be fine as long as she didn't move for a minute or so until they could take all attention away from her, and whoever was in the warehouse was attempting to conserve ammunition. Though his mask made it difficult to see, Cyborg thought he looked wearier than he'd ever seen him.

"We fight," he said. "We take care of these assholes and then we find Raven."

Robin's cursing almost knocked the fear out of Cyborg, replacing it with surprise. He couldn't recall ever having heard him curse before. Reconsidering, Cyborg thought that perhaps Robin cursing wasn't a reason to no longer be afraid. Perhaps it only provided all the more reason to be sick with fear.

Robin had begun to fiddle with his belt, checking some of his bombs. He cursed himself for his earlier swim to the Tower. The water had ruined most of his explosives, soaking the gunpowder stored inside. He cast a few duds to the ground and replaced some that he thought might still work. Glancing back to Cyborg he said with a grim look set on his face, "We're down by two and they have the upper hand. We can't play nice."

Cyborg stared uncertain, "Dude, what are you sayin'?"

Robin's face hardened, "Set your sonic canon to the highest concentration."

"What are you sayin' man… you sayin' we're gonna kill these guys?"

Robin swallowed dryly, "Not if we don't have to."

oooooooooooooooooooooo

Robin slid out from behind the crate and brought his bo-staff down in a forward arch. The man that had just entered from the storage room fell forward with a thump and, to Robin's irritation, a screech of pain. So much for his stealth approach.

The crate Robin and the guy from the storage room's unconscious body were hidden behind exploded as one of the men waiting riddled it with bullets and Robin twisted his torso in a leaping dance as he kept his body a moving target, dodging from behind the destroyed crate out into the open, taking in his surroundings as he went. There were five other men in waiting, a little boy in black that Robin recognized as the one that had taken him down in the Tower when we was still suffering from repercussions of the intake of drugs he'd undergone (and, he suspected, the boy had as well), Jack, a murderer the titans had put away about a week before the virus had broken out, a man that referred to himself as The Associate, and two others Robin didn't recognize. Robin cursed as he saw they were all heavily armed. The warehouse had been rigged as a trap since he'd escaped.

Jack grinned savagely swinging up what he enjoyed referring to as Mabbo – an M-16 rapid-fire assault weapon. Da Boss wanted this one dead, which meant he was gonna shoot the kid till he was Swiss cheese.

_Oh jeez_, Robin thought scrambling backwards. His bo-staff caught on the edge of his crate and pulled out of his grasp. The words _I'm dead_ flashed through his mind and then Cyborg shot his sonic canon, a much brighter, nearly blinding beam of light stronger than he ever dared use while regularly fighting, and Jack flew backwards in a stream of blood, crashing back through a wooden crate behind him. Mabbo flew from his hands and slid across the floor, coming to a rest near the unconscious form of the guy from the storage room. Jack's associate sprang from behind the crate that Jack's body had just splintered and he stood for a moment staring at Cyborg and Robin ponderously holding an automatic weapon. For a moment everyone paused and then Robin went into a mad slide across the floor like he'd just entered the dance floor, his knees heating under the friction. Above him, shattered fragments of cement rained down as the associate fired off his automatic 1- 2- 3- 4 times. _Ain't dyin' here _he thought savagely snatching up his previously discarded bo-staff and launching himself to his feet.

Cyborg aimed another beam towards a tall, gangly looking man wielding a .357. He raised the gun and Cyborg shot off another beam before he'd had a chance to fire. The effect Cyborg's highly concentrated sonic cannon was more powerful than even Cyborg suspected. The man was blasted backwards, blood splattering the cement around him. The wound made from the cannon was oozing but had burned mostly closed so it wasn't gushing blood.

Cyborg didn't allow himself time to grasp what he'd just done to the man but instead cast himself behind a solid blue, semi-transparent wall of some kind of shield protruding from a device mounted on his chest plate that Robin wouldn't have recognized. He began running towards the little boy all dressed in black wielding a Remington rifle that was nearly too heavy for the boy to hold.

Jack had sat up from the crate, blood beginning to bubble from his lips screaming, "_Get them! Get the motha fuckin' kids you dumb fucks! It's what the boss wants! Blow the fucks away!"_

The kid in black tugged his rifle from the floor and pointed it at Cyborg, the nose shaking like it was being forcefully pulled back towards the floorboards. He pulled the trigger without stabilizing the weapon against his shoulder. First the barrel exploded with fire, and then the rifle shot out of the kid's hands. Cyborg staggered as his blue shield dulled and then brightened again, the bullet ricocheting off towards the wall and disintegrating a large portion of it. Cyborg had a fleeting thought that without his shield he would have been vaporized. The kid stared horrified at Cyborg as he realized he was no longer holding a gun. He reached behind his back and pulled a revolver from the hem of his pants.

_Jeez, _thought Cyborg, _These guys are loaded…_. The boy shot at Cyborg again and the bullet ricocheted off once more, this time finding a target in Antoine, one of the men Robin hadn't recognized, but as most of the people of Jump city recognized as the Man in Black's unofficial spokesman. "Oh jeeze," Antoine yelled and stumbled back, his chest caved in and blotches of red began to spread across his pressed, white shirt. Why he hated hauling all that metal around suddenly became apparent. Because gettin' shot with the shit really hurt.

"_Oh jeez oh jeez…_" Antoine cried falling forward onto his inverted chest. Cyborg hadn't had time to comprehend what had happened to the man before the kid shot the revolver off again, once… twice… three times….

Cyborg's shield had snapped off as he continued running towards the kid. He could only keep the power required for the shield running for small amounts of time and he began leaping into rolls and dodging to sides as he tried to keep his body a moving target. The kid had leaned over the body of the guy they called Tricks that Cyborg had shot and traded his now empty revolver for the .357. Cyborg's face paled visibly. The kid was back peddling, dragging the gun up and for a moment Cyborg was terrified that some snobby little brat with a gun he hardly knew how to fire was going to finish him off, but Starfire fluttered down from the crate she'd been knocked out on and her eyes blazed with a blinding scorch of green. The Magnum shot from the kid's hands and he howled in pain, falling backwards and tripping over his feet.

Robin was sprinting towards the associate swinging his bo-staff with more force than any major league baseball player could ever muster. The staff slammed against the associate's head as he fired off his automatic and he went down as the ceiling above them exploded in cement fragments and wood splinters. Robin ducked and covered his head against the bigger fragments and then looked up frantically searching for Raven, as though she'd be standing around waiting for him.

Jack had managed to drag himself over to the guy from the storage room and finally laid his hands back on Mabbo. He swung his M-16 up delightedly, yelled, "I got you!" and opened fire, filling the warehouse with blazing fire. His face was split into a huge wolf grin and before Cyborg, Robin, or Starfire could react the little boy in black was cut in half by a wall of bullets.

"_Stop it you idiot!" _the associate screamed having just sat up, blood streaming down his face blinding him in one eye. Jack however was wracked with blood lust. He raked the room with fire, blowing out crates, disintegrating cement panels, splintering wooden beams. All three of the remaining titans had dived to the floor, but Jack had already lost control of the gun. The force of Mabbo was driving back into his shoulder, forcing him into a turn and the muzzle of the gun had begun to rise, hardly threatening anyone still standing but causing excess amounts of destruction.

"I GOT HIM, I GOT HIM!" Jack was screaming above the machine-gun fire with a joyous hysteria. "MY LIFE FOR YOU BOSS! MY LIFE FO-"

Starfire ducked low as a wave of slugs pounded the wall above her head and then aimed a starbolt at the man. It was aimed for his chest but the turning motion of his body from the force of the weapon landed the bolt on his elbow and the weapon flung from his arms. Jack was lifted backwards, spun in midair and then bounced heavily off the floor once, coming to a rest against a splintered mass of wood that had been a crate minutes before.

For a moment the warehouse seemed to press in upon them with silence and then the associate leaped from his position diving for the kid's discarded .357. Robin sprinted forward trying to keep the man from the gun but he was too late. The associate dove on the ground, sliding on his belly, shards of cement and splinters cutting through his shirt and deep into this flesh. He snatched the gun and flipped onto his back, aiming at the target closest to him, Robin. He fired off the gun and it roared like a grenade detonation. Robin dove back to the ground and the bullet grazed his shoulder, tearing a chunk of flesh away and smashing into the wall behind him. Cyborg shot off his canon but the blaze went astray and splintered the crate to the left of the associate. Starfire raised her hand, a green bolt forming between her fingers just as the associate raised the Magnum for a second shot and they fired at each other at the same time. The bullet was disintegrated in Star's bolt as the two collided on a dead-on course and the bolt slammed into the associate's chest. He fell back, his head slamming into the ground knocking him unconscious, the Magnum flying from his hand. The front of his shirt disintegrated and began steaming at the edges. For a moment the room rang with silence as the titans took a moment to recover.

Starfire floated down to the ground, tapping lightly above a carpet of wood and glass and cement fragments. She looked from the dead body of the boy, his torso fallen a few feet from the lower half of his body, and then to the unconscious, possibly dead bodies of Tricks, the guy from the storage room, the associate and finally Jack. Then she burst into tears and fell forward onto her knees, slicing them open on shards of glass.

Cyborg was glancing frantically around and then to Robin. "We… we need to get them to a hospital, man. I mean- I mean that's what we gotta do right? We- we have to… they need to go to a hospital and- what do we do man?" he said on the verge of panic. They'd never done so much damage to any group of 'villains' in their crime-fighting career.

Robin paused uncertainly, his mind racing. He needed to find Raven. He didn't have time to call the shots. "Get the police down here. Call an ambulance for these men. Take care of Beast Boy and Star." Cyborg still looked lost but Robin had spun on his heel, cement grinding beneath his boots, and sprinted towards the door leading towards the winding stairs. He was positive that Raven would be somewhere near the cell he'd been kept in.

He grabbed at the handle, his hand slick with blood from a cut on his lower arm, and pulled the heavy wood door open. He practically flew down the stairs frantic to find Raven and when he nearly ran into her standing in the middle of the hall he was stopped dead with surprise.

"Raven!" he cried reaching forward to grasp her arm. Before he could touch her however she fazed out, her body dulling to a transparent black light and floated back from him. She spun around and fazed back into existence staring at him with piercing eyes. Eyes no longer a striking violet, but a deep black.

Robin let his hand drop to his side and stayed motionless, afraid to scare her any further away. He licked his dry lips and was surprised to taste blood, and only then became aware of just how beat up he was.

"Raven," he whispered unsure what to say. She cocked her head at him as though he were something fascinating and then seemed to lose interest. She raised her hand and flecks of darkness crackled around it. Robin nearly panicked and yelled out "Wait! Wait! Raven… Raven, please, tell me what's wrong. Tell me what he's done to you."

Raven didn't seem to register he'd spoken. Robin took a step back from her growing power. "Raven please… we just want you to come home." For a moment Raven started. She blinked surprised and stared at him as though he were speaking blasphemy. Robin took a flying leap of instinct.

"This is home Raven," he said gently spreading his hands. "This will always be home Raven. Right here. With the Titans. Whatever he's done… we can help you." There was a brief moment when Robin thought he had made it through to her, and his breath caught in his throat. Silence settled itself between them and the seconds ticked past excruciatingly slow. The features on Raven's face softened and recognition sparked in her eyes. She stared at Robin and to him it felt like hours, days as their eyes stayed locked together. But then Raven staggered back away from him, averting her eyes wildly. She bared her teeth at him ferociously and whipped her hand through the air, raising him from the floor and sending him slamming back against the wall telekinetically.

Robin cried out as he slid to the ground landing hunched on his knees. He looked up at her, his battered face etched with sorrow, and said softly, "We can help Raven."

Raven's face distorted first in sorrow, then fear, and finally settled as a grotesque figure of rage. She rose to her full height and dark streaks of black veined across her skin like thin wisps of spider web. Her eyes clouded over with first white, then black fog and she rasped in a voice that Robin didn't recognize, "I don't want your help." She raised her hands above her head, her cloak billowing behind her, and a black bird engulfed her in dark light. Robin yelled and scrambled to his feet, sprinting towards the spot that Raven had been standing but she was already gone. Crying out desperately Robin fell to his knees and slammed his fists into the ground, splattering blood from his cuts onto the cement. Too late.


	10. Chapter 9

Beast Boy had gotten a hold on himself. He had spent a good while grieving before stumbling back into the tower. He made his way through the dark halls up to the main common room and grasped at the main communicator at the console. He flipped it on to Robin's transmission and waited for the call to pull through. It was silent for a few minutes and then he remembered he had to send a message first. He pushed a small red button and said shakily "R-Robin? It's me. You there? Where are you guys…" He still felt groggy and was trembling slightly but that was from Raven's psychic blow to his mind. He had taken control of the grief and pain he'd felt upon regaining his memory.

The communicator remained silent for a moment and then Robin's face winked onto the screen. He was beat up and dirty, a layer of dust covering his body and blood patching his skin from scrapes and cuts. He looked weary but he had complete control over his emotions.

"Beast Boy? Are you ok?" he asked.

"Dude! What happened to you??" Beast Boy cried out.

Robin took Beast Boy's response as a 'yes.' "We're almost to the tower," he said. "I'll explain when we get back." And with that he cut the transmission.

Beast Boy switched off the communicator feeling blown off and slowly made his way towards the main Tower entrance.

oooooooooooooooooooooooooo

Robin bent his knees as he dropped to the ground from the few feet in the air that Starfire had released him. He watched as she flew back towards the shore to pick up Cyborg, who had elected to stay behind and hitch a ride second after Robin had made it back to the tower. With the main electricity down in the city and both Beast Boy and Raven down the Titans had had a hard time getting around. As Starfire gently grasped Cyborg and lifted them into the air on the distant shore Robin heard the Tower doors slide open. He turned around and watched Beast Boy slip out of the Tower looking entirely healthy. He made his way across the rocky island and called out to Robin.

"Where you guys been??"

Robin began making his way over, his heavy boots crunching against the dirt and gravel beneath them. He paused a few feet from Beast Boy and met his eager eyes. Cyborg and Starfire landed behind him and moved forward to stand with him and Beast Boy.

Robin looked out past the Tower towards the horizon line where the sun was setting. How to tell Beast Boy of what had happened? How to tell him that they had killed? That they had failed in their mission? That Raven was still missing….

He sighed heavily. "Lets go inside and sit down."

Beast Boy didn't argue but looked anxious as he spun around and led them inside. They made their way up to the common room where Beast Boy had just been. Cyborg plopped down on the couch before the big screen TV aware that it was going to take some major work to get the blood stains he was making out of the cushions but too weary to care enough to move. Starfire moved a set of game controls and lightly sat down next to him. She hadn't spoken much since the battle. Robin and Beast Boy sat down next to Cyborg and Starfire and after a moments pause Robin began to speak.

He told Beast Boy of Red's Disease. How it was a poison disguised as a virus that the Man in Black had used to contaminate the water sources of Jump City. He told him of the cure they'd created and how they'd saved Starfire with it. He explained their decision to go to the warehouse while Batman began spreading the cure and the battle that they'd faced there. And then he paused for a long moment, his face hardening as he dropped his gaze to the ground, and he told Beast Boy as well as Cyborg and Starfire of his confrontation with Raven.

He'd just said his final words explaining her departure when the lights flickered out. The Tower powered down. The Titans were left alone in the dark.

Beast Boy leapt out of his seat, his heart beating erratically. He hadn't expected the darkness at all. "Where'd the light go??" he cried out. He shifted into an owl without even thinking and flapped over to the back of the couch where he perched gazing into the room with his night vision.

"Cyborg… can you get the lights back up…?" Robin's voice floated from a few feet where he'd been standing.

"I don't know man… I'd have to see wha-" Cyborg stopped cut short. He'd heard something. A sound from the entrance of the Tower. A banging.

"Wha-" he started as Starfire formed a small starbolt in her hand illuminating the room in a soft green glow.

"Shhh" Robin whispered from near the doorway out into the hall. Cyborg was startled. He hadn't noticed Robin move. He considered turning on his light attached to his arm but decided against it. Robin probably wouldn't like anything giving away their position. Beast Boy, Starfire and Cyborg waited a few moments until Robin stalked back towards them.

"We were followed. They must have cut the main power line," he whispered.

Cyborg sat up from the couch wincing as a few open scrapes stuck to the cushions. "I can take care of that. I'll just power up the main lines for a few seconds using my supply and then switch things over to the auxiliary lines."

Robin nodded and made his way back towards the doors to keep a lookout. Cyborg heaved himself off the couch and over to the console. He lifted a plate on the underside of his arm and pulled out a large plug attached to a thick wire. He then yanked something from the wall and plugged the cord in. A few lights blipped into existence on the screen and Cyborg began typing rapidly. A few moments later the lights flickered back on and the Titans heard a comforting whir as the power came back up. Robin turned from the door to tell Cyborg good work when the door slid open. Robin spun his head back around and was pistol whipped across the face.

ooooooooooooooooooooooo

Beast Boy, Cyborg and Starfire had all leapt into action before Robin had touched the ground. Beast Boy leapt towards Robin's assailant melting into a huge Bengal Tiger with a yowl. The man rolled to the ground barely dodging Beast Boy's attack. Beast Boy's paws padded onto the ground and he allowed himself to slide as he spun around. He began to move forward back towards his enemy but was surprised to find he was being shot at from behind.

Justin, another gunman sent by the Darkman, who'd elected to stay behind to keep Robin's attacker's back, had a machine pistol trained on Beast Boy, but Beast Boy moved too quickly. He leapt behind a bookcase and seemingly disappeared. Robin, who'd sat up with a hand held to his bloody head just in time to see, thought he'd probably transformed into some type of bug, a ploy he often played when he was hoping to sneak up on someone, but the .45 that the other man was holding was very loud and distracting so he didn't have much time to think on it. Leaping from the floor Robin threw a flash bomb towards his attackers face and the man screamed as it went off directly in front of his eyes. He fired twice, blindly flailing his gun and clipped Starfire, who'd been charging Justin with a starbolt forming in hand, in the shoulder. She made a startled gasp and crumpled to the floor. Robin was vaguely aware of calling out to her but he was already ducking down for cover as Justin began firing random shots about the room.

Beast Boy chose that moment to reappear, transforming from the housefly he'd been into a bright green lynx. He leaped from his perch on the bookcase onto Justin's back and dug his back claws deep into his lower back, whipping his tail for balance. His spotted front paws batted at Justin's gun hand playfully as Justin threw his arms up in panic. Beast Boy let out a loud yowl and Justin, screaming curse words profusely, slammed backwards into a wall, crushing Beast Boy between him and it. Beast Boy's eyes widened and he fell to the ground squirming to get his feet under him. Justin aimed his pistol and fired off a round but Beast Boy was running before his feet hit the ground, dodging back behind the bookcase.

Cyborg fired off his canon and Justin dove to the ground, rolling with his pistol hand flailing above his head. When he came up everyone paused for a moment and stared, Justin's eyes meeting Cyborg's. Then, Justin smashed through the window behind him. None of the Titans could see if he'd plummeted to the ground or if he'd previously planned on jumping out the window and somehow survived. The man who'd been with Justin, realizing he was now alone, chose that moment to rake the room with bullets. The titans took cover and the man blasted away every spot of the room he didn't find to his liking, hoping he'd catch one of the titans on off chance.

Robin was crouched behind an old, burnt orange sofa when he heard the hammer on the second man's .45 fall. The gun was empty. His face fell as Robin leaped up and over the sofa, twisting his spine as he flipped and landed gracefully. Robin lashed out with his right fist and the man dodged clumsily. Robin threw in his left fist and the man stumbled backwards. Robin paused and regarded the man and then kicked him in the crotch. The man didn't dodge.

"Duuude!!" Beast Boy's laughter floated up from behind the bookcase as the man fell hard on his side yelling profanity. Cyborg joined in and shook his head at Robin disbelievingly. Robin shied a grin and Starfire's laughter joined the boy's with joy, not understanding their humor but joining in the laughter nonetheless. Robin glanced towards her to make sure she was alright. He saw she had a shallow wound in her shoulder that was slowly seeping blood but was otherwise unharmed. Robin shook the grin from his face and leaned over the man who was clutching his crotch delicately.

"Tell me where The Man in Black is," Robin suggested.

The man blinked up at him and spat in his face. Robin looked annoyed and swiped it off before suggesting once more that the man tell him where The Man in Black was. The man grinned and suggested that Robin go fuck himself.

Robin's eyes narrowed and he snapped the back of his hand across the man's face.

The man clenched his jaw and then started "Ai, well, Man in Black you say? Well, I expect ther are a'lots a mans in black in this city dontcha think?" He asked. Robin punched him in the jaw. He let out a stream of profanity and spat towards Robin again.

"Err…" Beast Boy started, "this doesn't seem to be going anywhere." Robin threw him a look and once again asked the man where he could find the Man in Black.

The man suggested an abandoned Catholic church, and maybe if he were lucky enough he'd get there in time for the Man in Black to gut him and strangle him with his own intestines.

ooooooooooooooooooooooo

Batman was at his third hospital. He'd been to the two main Jump City hospitals already and was now working his way through a small private hospital on the East side of the city. He'd been working non-stop for hours, starting with the largest hospital in the city. He'd picked up a stethoscope from the body of a young looking doctor and began checking each body for a heart beat. The hospital halls were lined with bodies both dead and still alive, and the rooms were overstocked. In some areas it was hard to walk without stepping on someone. Some were obvious in their state of living, gasping for rattled breaths as their bodies fought off the poison contaminating it. Others, on the verge of death, had slowed to shallow pained breaths. If there was the slightest flutter of a heartbeat he stuck the patient with a dosage of antidote.

After sweeping the first floor he wound his way to the labs and restocked on the cure. Then, he found his way back to the first wing he'd begun with and checked the patients. Their breathing was easier, their congestion cleared and the phlegm from their lungs emptied away. Satisfied he continued his sweep of the hospital. Hours later he finished up the fifth level and then made his way back to the first wing again. He found the doctor he'd first taken the stethoscope from (who'd still been alive) and checked his breathing and fever. He seemed perfectly fine except for deep shadows beneath his eyes and a ghost like paleness. He spent awhile reviving him and a few more minutes for him to recover. And then he put him to work.

It continued much in this way. Batman would create more doses of antidote and go body to body checking for heartbeats. He'd return to his earlier patients and if they were revived he set them to work. He'd then drop by the lab and create more doses.

Some patients died even with the cure. Their bodies too weary to continue existence even as the antidote swept the newly made corpses clean of the contamination. But for the most part the people of Jump City were saved one soul at a time.

By the time Batman had arrived at the private hospital he had a small army working for him. He didn't ask everyone to assist him. Most were too weary from their trial of sickness to help him. But he asked most of the doctors and the stronger ones. He set up a group to start going door to door in the buildings surrounding the hospital, breaking in to rooms if need be to reach dying citizens. He also set up a team to work in the labs, continuing to replicate the cure in order to create a nonstop supply.

While Batman was content to have gotten this far he was still aware that at the rate they were going it would take weeks if not months to cure the entire City. The people helping were newly revived and weary, working slow and taking a lot of breaks. While he worked nonstop he was the only one doing so. But as the hours labored on he continued stubbornly. And one by one, the dying people of Jump City were revived.

oooooooooooooooooooooooo

Robin, followed by his remaining Titans, strode up the deserted street towards old town. He was moving towards one of the older cathedrals that he recalled had heavy wood doors and high windows, a good place to form a strong hold. His stomach was squirming with butterflies for the first time in nearly 4 years. His demeanor however was calm. He'd not show fear this close to his enemy.

As he drew closer he felt the tension around the Titans grow. The air seemed thick, like they were being watch by hundreds of sets of eyes, but that wasn't possible. The streets of Jump City had been deserted for weeks. The people that had survived the wave of the dark man's poison didn't come out into the daylight anymore….

They rounded a corner and Robin spotted the cathedral spires above the surrounding buildings. He paused and turned back towards Beast Boy.

"Could you look ahead?" he asked. His voice was husky from contained fear. Beast Boy nodded and leaped into the air, his arms morphing into wings and the rest of him forming a hawk a moment after. He spun upwards and shot towards the cathedral gracefully, his wings tearing through the soft current of wind blowing in from the North. He circled the bell tower once and then made his way back, touching ground as his morphed back.

"There's nothing…" he said. "I didn't see anything. It's empty."

Robin nodded and gestured them forward. They continued forward until they reached the cathedral. It lay vacant, a holy skeleton of its former glory. Robin stared upwards at the tall tower as he climbed the stairs, the Titans close behind. He made it to the heavy front doors and stopped, turning back to Starfire, Cyborg and Beast Boy.

"Ok… we're just gonna search the place. I'm not sure if this is where he's hiding but we still need to be on our guard."

With that he spun back and placed his hand on the great oak doors. They creaked with disuse and age, opening onto a still, empty chapel. Robin's eyes scanned constantly as he moved forward.

Though they moved quietly their footsteps still echoed loudly, making Robin nervous. They were about half way down the chapel isle, rows of pews stretching out on both sides, when Robin heard the creak of the doors they'd left open. He spun around and the Man in Black stood behind the door slowly pushing it closed with a white spidery hand. He was hardly visible hidden in shadow but all 4 Titans could feel his presence. Robin opened his mouth to speak when the man in black began to laugh. He stepped forward and his eyes glinted in the dim light. Robin thought he saw a soft glow of red for a moment but shrugged it off as a trick of the light. Cyborg, Starfire and Beast Boy all moved in around him, forming a line.

The Man in Black continued to laugh, a terrifying cruel laughter that cut through the very warmth of one's blood and pierced the heart with fear.

"Titans. How well you prove your strength, killing my men. Good day and good day and good day to you too," the darkman greeted. Cyborg felt his stomach churn and tighten. The Black Man spoke truth… they _had_ killed.

Robin lips twisted into a bare of teeth. "Fight us on fair grounds you coward," he spat. "Why hide behind all these hired guns?"

"Those guns were not hired," The Man in Black laughed, stalking to the side of the chapel beneath the high windows. Though the Titans were aware it was late morning outside, none of the light seemed to penetrate the high stained-glass windows. "They serve me with loyalty," his eyes glittered darkly and he nearly disappeared in the shadows of the room, "they serve me because they fear me. But those guns are the least of your worries little Robin. You're up against an army now. MY army. Your titans are strong, but you're fighting the people you've protected. You're fighting the citizens of Jump City now," the dark man flashed a grin, "sounds like it's gonna be a _party_ don'it?"

Robin suddenly became aware of that feeling again. The thickness of the air, of being watched. Only this time he knew why he was feeling it. It was because they _were_ being watched. The Titans were surrounded. Robin felt an annoying flutter of fear as he stared into the grinning eyes of the Man in Black, recalling the insane laughter floating in the dark as he sat drugged and beaten in his cell. The Black Man's men moved in around the Titans with a sickly glee gleaming in their eyes. They were excited to fight.

Robin's mask hid his emotions well, but desperation was beginning to line his face. He couldn't think of a way out of this. "Where's Raven!?" he yelled out. Cyborg, Beast Boy and Starfire pretended not to notice his voice crack.

The Man in Black grinned his maddening grin and didn't answer. His hand, which had been held forward in mock welcome, flicked towards his men and they began to move forward, guns lowering. "Titans… Titans MOVE!" Robin yelled flipping sideways more jerkily than his usual grace. Beast Boy streamed forward, melting into a huge Bengal Tiger voice screaming a feline yowl. He swiped viciously at the nearest man who tumbled backwards firing his gun wildly. Starfire leapt into the air as three men with semi-automatics began berating the room with fire, twisting into a deadly dance, alternating between starbolts shot from her eyes and hands, whilst dodging stray gunshots. Cyborg's cannon raked the room, men falling in its wake, pattering the floorboards like raindrops. Robin fought ferociously, his limbs moving with watery grace, giving him the illusion that he was moving much slower than he was. He threw a punch at the closest man and used his momentum to spin a roundhouse kick at the next. He twisted down to the floor and swept his foot out at shins and then pushed off with his hands into a handstand, kicking at faces, torsos, anything he could harm. He flipped onto his feet and punched forward, spun around and punched again. He was unaware of who he was hitting, running more on instinct, the hours of training relentlessly taking control of his muscles. And all the while the darkman grinned at the alter, watching the Titans fight among the pews with the huge dark stain glass figure of the virgin Mary rising behind them, watching sorrowfully with ancient eyes.

"More…" he whispered to himself as his men continued to stream in from the church double doors surrounding the Titans with masses of people.

Cyborg was amazed at the number of men. He hadn't seen this many people in days, weeks… he was amazed to see so many alive in such a concentrated area. In the corner of his eye he spotted a flash of green as Starfire spun in midair, her eyes streaming with green light, beaming down any bullets shot towards her. Another flash of green as Beast Boy's warebeast smashed its way through four men, tearing their guns away like a mother taking candy from its child scoldingly before dinner. He didn't see Robin but he could hear his battle cries on the other side of the cathedral. Cyborg spun on his heel, firing his cannon, blasting back a handful of men. And still the men continued to stream through the church doors.

Beast Boy screamed a feral blood-cry. He felt his fist slam into the face of some poor soul who slammed backwards with a scream of pain. He dropped to all fours and charged a group of men aiming their guns towards the air at Starfire. He trampled two men, flung his arms and caught three more. His tough hide protected him from grazes, but his skin, singed from bullets was heating his body up badly. He didn't think of this however. With another cry he swiped at a man that was just leveling his weapon at him. Beast Boy allowed his were beast's instincts complete control over him as the desperation of the situation elevated. He fought and fought and fought. And still the men continued to come in through the church doors.

Starfire screamed as she darted up towards the high ceiling, her hands high above her head pouring green bolts onto her foes. She could feel her power exhausting her as she continued a constant stream of starbolts. She kicked into a spin as the men below raised their guns towards her, tumbling across the chapel with deadly grace. Her eyes flared green at any man that was so unlucky to meet her eyes and she raked the air with bolts to vaporize bullets midair before they could ever reach their destination. She spun and flipped, dancing midair, aiming with terrible precision falling any man her eye landed on. And still, the Dark Man's army surrounded the titans with terrible numbers.

Robin leveled his bo-staff at the man in front of him and jabbed him in the chest. The man gasped and fell backwards wheezing. Robin had already moved on. He slammed his staff at the muzzle of the Remington Rifle leveled at Cyborg and then yanked the bo-staff back and up into the man's face. He twisted his torso back and around, crashing past several men behind him. He was hardly aware that his costume was, for the first time in his crime-fighting career, covered in blood other than his own. His bo-staff dripped with it every time it came to rest for a moment. Robin screamed as we chucked a small heat explosive directly into the torso of a man carrying a .45. It detonated and the man's shirt and body armor burst into flame. The sweet stench of burnt meat touched at his nostrils as Robin continued to fight like a savage hell-beast. Anything else would be the death of him. He fought on and on but still he knew deep inside him that men on hand to hand combat can survive an array of men with guns and weaponry for only so long. They needed a miracle. He ducked as a man leveled a gun towards him and rolled forward and his fist met with a hard jawbone. He spun and by chance he realized that he was in the isle between the sections of pews directly in front of the alter. For a moment, Robin met the darkman's eyes staring at him from the front of the cathedral and was paralyzed. There was a coldness between them that groped at Robin's heart and he gasped for breath. The room seemed silent and the fighting faded away. The Man in Black raised a pistol from beneath the alter and leveled it at Robin. For a moment Robin expected he would be shot directly in the heart, dead on impact, _I'm dead I'm dead I'm dead…_. But even as the gun roared he heard the far-away scream of Starfire's battle cry, and a scorch of emerald flared into the Darkman's pistol.

Robin slammed backwards, blood spurting from his shoulder. His back crashed against a pew and his head cracked backwards against the dense oak wood. Sparkling lights flashed in front of his eyes disorienting him and he slid to the ground. His ears were roaring with silence and he could barely hear Cyborg yelling for him and Starfire crying out. The steady thought _we_ _lost…_ was rolling around his head, fluttering like a dark moth. He laid on the ground, his shoulder screaming with fiery pain unable to move, his mind slowing down, his thoughts coming fewer and confused. He didn't know how long he laid on the ground, although he didn't think it was too long because no one had trodden over him in the fight with the other Titans. It came to him that the noise level had been depleting, that it had been lessening for a while. He cracked his eyes open and the world dizzied for a moment. When his vision came into focus his lungs froze mid-breath, and his blood slammed to a halt in his veins.

The darkman's men surrounded him. The fighting had stopped. His Titans were gone… they'd left him. He was alone. And the Man in Black was standing above him with that terrible grin.

ooooooooooooooooooo

When Robin went down Cyborg began to panic. He hadn't been thinking during the fight because there was no room for it, no room to pause for a breath or think things through. He'd just kept fighting because that's what Robin had said to do. But when Robin fell, Cyborg became aware that all of a sudden he wasn't following anyone's orders anymore. There was no one leading them.

Cyborg spun around and landed his fist directly center of a man's chest that he suspected had been trying to sneak up behind him undetected. His heart began to pick up speed. What were they going to do? What if things changed? What if there was an opportunity that Robin was waiting for? He didn't know. He had no idea what Robin had been planning.

He powered up his sonic cannon and swiped it past a group of men to his left. They fell backwards gracefully, almost like they'd planned it. He spun back to his right and nearly shot Starfire when she touched down beside him.

"Robin is hurt!" she cried flaring beams of light from her eyes. Cyborg turned so he had his back against hers and leveled his cannon at a man bearing a huge semi-automatic assault weapon.

"I know…" he yelled back. He was afraid. The lack of men Robin should have been taking out was beginning to become apparent. There were only three Titans now…. A pained feral scream touched Cyborg's ears and he whipped his head around in time to see Beast Boy's werebeast slam down between two still-standing pews near himself and Starfire. Beast Boy's shrank into his human form with his hands over his head shielding him from stray shrapnel.

"Where's Robin??" he screamed above the gunfire. Cyborg powered up his shield and fired it up, shielding him, Beast Boy and Starfire for a few moments giving him time to think.

"He's down, he got shot," Cyborg told Beast Boy. He turned towards his titans and looked each in the eyes. "We gotta get out of here. We gotta regroup. We can't beat them like this. I don't know what Robin had planned but if we stay here we're gonna get taken down too."

Beast Boy stared at him shocked. "What… you mean like… leave Robin?" Starfire was shaking her head violently.

"No!" she cried, "we can not leave him. There must be another way."

"There is none," Cyborg snapped, "we can't help him if we're all dead."

"We also can not help him if the dark man slays him!" Starfire cried angrily.

Beast Boy looked torn, his eyes pained. He looked from Starfire to Cyborg unsure. "I… I think we should r-retreat," he stammered feeling traitorous. Starfire gave him a single pained look and then Cyborg's shield winked out as his power wound down. Bullets pounded the pews above Beast Boy's head and his crumpled form swelled into his werebeast once more. Starfire leapt into the air spinning and whipped her hand out firing starbolts at the man firing on them.

Cyborg blasted a group of men blocking the door and began to make his way towards them. He heard Beast Boy yowling behind him striking out at nearby enemies with his mighty paws. Starfire darted above them taking men out from above, clearing their path towards the doors. A few minutes later the Titans were out the cathedral, Cyborg swooped up in Starfire's strong grip and Beast Boy melted into the form of a pterodactyl. Defeated, the remaining flew off into the distance.

ooooooooooooooooooooooo

Robin slowly came to, his eyes blurring in and out of focus. He became aware that he was being dragged down some sort of hall and moaned loudly. He was drug into a tiny room and whoever had been dragging him stopped and dropped the pit of cape they'd been using to pull him. Robin's body was beginning to lose the numbness that had overtaken him and his shoulder began to demand immediate attention. He moved a hand to clutch at it and a fist slipped in and grasped the front of his shirt. The hand lifted him and pushed him against the wall and Robin's eyes lost focus as he became dizzy from the sudden movement.

When he regained focus he was staring into the eyes of the Darkman inches from his face. His stomach churned with butterflies and he moved to push the man away with the hand he wasn't clutching his shoulder with but as soon as he moved his arm pain lanced down from his shoulder all the way to his fingertips. His vision went black and little specks of light danced around in the darkness. He cried out and felt his legs give out from under him but the Man in Black's grip held him in place. He heard the Man's laughter cut through the roaring sound the pain was making in his ears and he forced himself to focus. He let go of his shoulder and punched forward with his fist bloody from his wound. The Man in Black was if nothing else surprised from Robin's punch and let go of his shirt. Robin, who's legs were still not supporting him, tumbled forward and banged his shoulder against the ground.

Squeezing his eyes shut against the pain Robin cried out and felt an involuntary tear slide down his cheek. He brought his knees to his chest forgetting he was in the company of the Man in Black and clutched at his shoulder breathing in short gasps.

The Darkman was amused by Robin's display of resistance. His face was splattered with the blood that had been covering Robin's fist but that was the only thing Robin's weak blow had accomplished. Leaning down over Robin's crumpled form the Darkman grasped his wrist and pulled it away from his shoulder. He moved so his knee was holding his hand down and pressed his palm against Robin's chest so that he was held down completely.

Then, the Darkman reached for Robin's shoulder. His fingers dug into the wound and Robin let out a screaming bellow. He bucked violently and his head crashed against the floor with a loud smack but the Man in Black had no trouble keeping the weakened boy in place. His fingers dug deep past the layers of muscle and tissue and sinews until he felt the small metal bullet. He had trouble grasping the bullet with the two fingers he had in the wound because of the slick blood but eventually plucked it from Robin's shoulder. Robin continued to scream for a few moments after and then gasped harshly, his breaths coming in great gulps. The Darkman smiled slightly and stood off of the boy. He waited until he had recovered slightly and slit his eyes open and then held up the bullet for him to see.

"I got you a pres-ennnt," he said cheerily. "But little Robin you don't get it unless you been a good boy allllll year."

Robin continued to gasp and slowly managed to move his hand back up to his shoulder grasping it and screwing his face up from pain.

The Darkman twitched feeling ignored and took a vile out from his jacket pocket. He leaned down on his haunches and took Robin's chin turning him so he looked into his eyes. He held up the vile with his other hand so that Robin could see and said, "This is penicillin. It'll keep that perty shoulder of yours from gettin' all infected. If you use it there's a possibility you won't die. And I really hope you use it Robin cause I'd so just _love _for you to stay alive."

The Darkman put the vile down next to Robin and stood up. "See you later alligator. I'll be back in the morning." He spun on his heel out of the room and swung what sounded like a heavy door shut. Robin lay in the dark breathing harshly against the pain in his shoulder. He was scared and alone and in pain. They'd left him. His Titans had fed him to the Man in Black to save themselves. He turned his face down towards the ground in case the Man in Black had cameras rigged somewhere in the room to keep an eye on him. He didn't want his enemy to see him crying.


	11. Chapter 10

He didn't know who she was. He didn't know how she'd come into being, for she was most certainly not sired by any normal human means. He didn't know why she had come to him. She was dark and deadly and gorgeous. Her pale sharp features were hidden by a dark long hood that attached to a long flowing cloak. Two glittering, black eyes pierced from beneath and split through human flesh, blood and bone, seeing all the emotions, feelings, the very essence and soul of anything she glanced upon. Wisps of deep purple hair fell across her face hiding her beauty, keeping her image impossible to remember, a mystery woman with a dark past and darkness in her soul.

The Man in Black was sitting in an abandoned house on a leather couch in front of a large, lit hearth, sipping something thick and crimson from a wine glass, his ancient leather boots propped on the coffee table in front of him. He was most disappointed with his failure in capturing all the titans, but he was also pleased that he'd snared the little bird, their little _leader_, the teen titan that every criminal could recognize and fear. It made him sick. Sick that a boy could endow fear into murderers, thieves, psychopaths… his children. But he would fix that soon.

Raven stood listlessly in the shadows of the room, in the farthest corner. She was nothing but a silhouette, but the hearth's light reflected in her eyes and they shone brightly. The Man in Black regarded her fondly. She had brought the titans to him, although she hadn't done it entirely purposely. It was her they'd been after. She looked at him, through him, she didn't see him. Her eyes met his and remained unblinking, unregistering, unfeeling. He adored those eyes. He hoped he could one day look into all of his children and see that inhumanity staring back at him. He had already started it he knew. It almost made him laugh to see the citizens of Jump City now. What he'd turned lawful citizens into in a few short weeks, with a few doses of chemicals cast into the water. They dared call themselves human, compassionate, above every other beast. And yet all he had to do was look at one, just _look _at one, and they'd murder for him, they'd rape for him, they'd eat the fingers off live children if he asked them to.

And now, _now_ he would have no more struggle. He would not have to provoke acts of inhumanity to keep his society growing as he had begun. All he had to do was destroy their hope, destroy their last image of law and order and justice and strength and _good. _All he had to do was destroy the titans so that everyone would know that everything that had been was over. That he had brought a new order and that corpses would dance along the light of day, and blood would spurt from the skies, and terror would shoot across the night fallen from shooting stars, and everything that he was would be everything that they are.

The Darkman smiled. This dark maiden would help him somehow, he could feel it within him. And she had been one of them. That would drive the titans to fall, fighting their own sister. And when the titans fell, Jump City would fall. And when he had Jump City he would move to the next city, only this time he would have thousands of followers to start with. Perhaps Gotham would be next. And when that city was his he would continue his plague and he would set the west to burning and the north to blazing. And everything would be his.

ooooooooooooooooooo

"Com'ere Wolf," Lloyd called into the dark hall leading to the empty abandoned theatre lobby. The "Wolf" was a new kid that Lloyd figured fancied himself something of a 'tough' guy. Either that, or the nickname came about from his yellow eyes back before Captain Red. Lloyd thought he might be slightly mad. But insanity didn't discount your ability to serve the Boss. Only disloyalty could do that. Lloyd felt himself grow cold inside. The Boss was one guy you never wanted to be disloyal to.

"What Lloyd? What is it?"

Lloyd didn't answer. The kid was new. Taking a hold of Wolf's arm lightly, he led him toward the back exit of the theatre. As they emptied out into the now crowded street Lloyd caught sight of his good man Sticks. Sticks was standing next to a large, crude cross, its vertical piece about ten feet long leaning against the theatre outside wall. He had one leather boot caked in old mud propped up on it. The Street was lined with a silent crowd, hundreds present. They stood tense and afraid. They'd seen blood and justice before.

"Are we ready?" Lloyd asked Sticks.

Sticks nodded, "Yea, Heck took role call. We got a couple people missin' but The Boss said not ta' worry about'em."

Lloyd didn't respond. Sticks took a long drag from his cigarette. The Wolf stared uncertainly at the cross and then at Lloyd's pale face, staring intently towards the towering cross.

Sticks cocked his head towards the Wolf. "How much does the kid know?" he asked.

The Wolf shifted his weight nervously. "Nothin', I don't know nothin'," he said, awe and fear and dread filling his confused mind. Lloyd turned towards him and placed a hand on his shoulder. He liked the kid.

"Hey Wolf, just pretend you don't know him okay? That's what I do kid, just pretend you ain't never spoken to the guy," Lloyd saw fear shining through The Wolf's yellow eyes. "It's the Boss's justice...You don't know him. It makes it easier-"

Two wide hotel doors from across the street banged open. Frantic, terrified screams pushed against their ears. The crowd sighed and shifted.

A crowd of seven made their way down the steps to the street. Lloyd saw him in the middle fighting like a tiger, the kid Jimmy. Only he wasn't the kid Jimmy anymore. He wasn't anyone anymore. His face was dead pale. Sweat poured down his face in icy streams. He'd been stripped of his clothes. He was babbling.

"Hey Heck! Hey you know I ain't done wrong man. What do you say Heck I ain't done nothin' to deserve this right Heck? I can get clean man I ain't dependent on it or nothin' I don't need it Heck! _Please,_ Heck!!!" Heck was to the left of Jimmy, gripping his arm in a white-knuckled grasp. Heck didn't say anything to Jimmy.

Following were three white-faced men, eyes vacant of emotion. One carried a clipboard with a crisp, typed paper. Another, an old stepladder. And the last carried a hammer, and three long, crude iron stakes.

They dragged Jim through the silent, parted crowd towards Sticks. As they passed, Lloyd could see the whites of his rolling eyes, like a horse trapped in a burning stall. Jimmy called out to the Wolf.

"Hey Wolfy," he cried out, his throat raw, "Hey Wolfy tell em' to cut it out okay? Tell em' I can get clean man! Tell em' I won't even need no fuckin' rehab after this scare right Wolf? Tell em' Wolf!" The Wolf stared hard at Jim, his bright eyes dimming and losing focus on the man.

"I don't know you," he mumbled.

The crowd was murmuring all around, sharp intakes of breath, fearful whispers. But The Wolf's words caught Jimmy's fragmented attention.

"What do you _mean_ you don't know me?!" He cried wildly. "What do you mean? We was just talkin' the other day! We had fuckin' lunch together! We was fuckin' clean up crew together! What do you fuckin' mean you rat's ass chickenshit fuckin' liar!!"

"I don't know you at all," The Wolf said more clearly, staring up from his shoes directly into Jimmy's eyes. "I ain't never seen you before, and I never want to again."

"You KNOW me!" Jimmy screamed. "YOU KNOW ME YOU KNOW ME!!!!"

The Wolf stared coldly, his yellow eyes bright and cold. The men carrying Jimmy kicked out his feet and threw him toward the cross. He landed partially off it straining against the iron hands securing him. The man with the clipboard began to read.

"Attention attention. This man, Jimmy Alonzo Hoopes by name, is by order of the Dark Lord, leader of the surviving peoples of Jump City and First Citizen, is ordered and sentenced to the act of crucifixion until death for the crime of drug use."

"_Oh God no! NO! NO! NO NO!!!!"_ Jim screamed. The man carrying the hammer and stakes knelt down next to Jimmy, and motioned the man holding him to keep him still as possible.

"Drug use impairs the user's ability to contribute fully to this society, as well as in service of the Boss, and has been therefore prohibited. Specifically, Jimmy was found with an excess amount of cocaine."

Jimmy's head flung back and forth from side to side, his screams reaching a piercing level that seemed like it would crack glass. Blood streaked down his arms and feet in rivulets where they'd been stapled down to the cross. Foam bubbled from his mouth.

"In best intentions for this society, and for the good of all here present, this act is concluded with the solemn warning of disloyalty to the Boss, and to the society."

Seven men, The Wolf included, hoisted the cross up into an afore fixed square hole in the ground, rimmed with cement. Jimmy hung silhouetted against the sky.

"_Oh my God it hurts! IT HURTS! Oh my God Oh my God Oh God!" _Jimmy screamed out. The crowd of people stretched out on both sides of the streets, hundreds witnessed the accounts of Jimmy's punishment. They watched him scream for over an hour. The Wolf sat down comfortably on the ground and watched The Man in Black's justice squirm in agony. He was one of the few present that felt no fear. He had no reason to be afraid. He didn't know that man. He'd never known the man at all.

And as Jimmy hung in agony against the colorless sky and screamed for mercy, not a soul stepped forward to help him.

ooooooooooooooooooooo

Robin slowly became aware of a gentle pulse somewhere beyond the reach of his consciousness. It was warm and inviting and he knew he wanted to reach it. However the nearer he came to exiting his oblivion of insensibility to reach the pulse the more excruciatingly needy his arm, as well as the rest of his aching body, became. The pulse was retreating now, becoming soft and unclear. He imagined it regrettably walking backwards away from him, hand outstretched waiting for him to take it. For some reason it was violet in color.

He didn't have to open his eyes to know where he was. The floor beneath him was hard and cold and the air was stale and dank. He was in the same place he'd been the last time he'd forcibly returned to consciousness. The syringe the Man in Black had left lay empty where he'd left it used. Robin wasn't ready to die. He hadn't even had his chance to fight the Dark Man on fair grounds. And deep in his gut Robin hadn't yet gotten past his instinctual fear of death. He'd stuck himself with the syringe knowing full well the Dark Man could have put the same drugs he'd used to create Robin's unnatural nyctophobia and fugues. He had no idea if the drug was working as it pumped through his system but he was content that he wasn't dead, nor terrified of the darkness, nor collapsing into seizures. Fear is a very powerful thing.

The pulse was hardly apparent anymore. He near desperately wished it would come back. Of course, the moment he became conscious enough to regret the absence of the pulse he also became aware of how parched he was, and cold, and the terrible biting ache deep in his muscles from the battle the day before and sleeping on the hard floor, and worst of all his bullet wound, which he suspected was still open and oozing all sorts of things he'd rather have stay inside him. He became aware of something fluttering at his ear attempting to be heard and his brain slowly processed the sound. It was himself, moaning quietly. He clamped his mouth shut to quiet himself and turned his attention to his thirst.

It took him what seemed like a lifetime of numbing pain as he crawled around feeling with his hands but he had eventually scoped out the entirety of his cell and found no source of water. He carefully lowered himself back down to the ground from his crouched position with his good arm and wondered bitterly if the Dark Man had left him the penicillin just so he would have a slower painful death from lack of water. Someone had however apparently been waiting for signs of life in his cell, or perhaps been checking up on him every so often, but a few minutes after he'd settled himself back onto the floor his door swung open. His eyes protested the light that streamed in and he squinted against the bright rays to attempt to see his visitor. His muscles tightened as adrenaline pumped through his system readying himself to push off the ground to defend himself (although he knew he probably wouldn't do much damage to his opponent in his condition). However before he could get his bearings straight the door had snapped shut again and he was once again lost in the dark. He reluctantly edged around his cell and found a small metal cup filled with metallic water. He was grateful as he sipped at his cup but he'd been growing uneasy since the door had closed. He swore he could still feel the presence of someone in his cell.

"Who's there…" he rasped. Silence pressed in against his ears. He squinted into the darkness, seeking movement, a shadow deeper then the surrounding dark, anything to give him an idea as to what was inside the room with him. And then, there! A dark that was deeper then the rest, a black inkier and thicker then the rest. Robin jerked himself into a sitting position and pulled his feet under him in a crouch, his good hand holding him balanced against the stone wall behind him. His heart was pounding against his sternum, hyperactive as fresh adrenaline coursed through him.

The shadow moved toward him, a long thin stretch reaching forward, and then, a hand formed. Robin scrambled back from it.

"Who are you? What do you want," he demanded avoiding the creepy hand.

"Robinnnn…" a female voice purred through the dark. Robin's back bumped against the stone wall of his tiny cell. The hand moved closer, and the shadow took more form as it stretched forward. A slender shoulder, attached to an obviously female torso. Robin felt himself grow warm in his cheeks. "Howdy stranger," she whispered.

"Who are you?" Robin demanded again, his tone growing icy to make up for the growing heat through his body.

"What are you doin' all alone here cowboy? All alone…" she slithered closer to him. Robin shifted his weight as he decided he'd had enough. He snapped his fist towards the inky shadow arm and it hit something solid and warm. She hissed and recoiled her hand. Robin used the wall behind him to lurch to his feet and back into the corner of his cell.

"Get away," he said savagely. He'd lost his freedom, been betrayed by his Titans, failed in rescuing Raven as well as destroying the Man in Black, and now, as he laid with an aching flesh wound in his shoulder, and no water or food, this bitch was trying to kill or hurt or _seduce_ him. And whichever it was he wasn't going to let it go any farther.

And suddenly, she was right next to him, her shadowy form melting and reforming and oozing around him touching and prodding and he recoiled disgusted, shoving out at her liquid form. She was laughing at him and whispered somewhere near his ear, "Shall I rip them off?" and this time he punched forward with everything he had right where the voice had come from refusing to think of what she might be referring to. She shrieked angrily, only this time it sounded more crow then human.

"Why are you here? What did he send you here for?" he yelled furiously. Her form was shrinking and pieces of her shadowy limbs kept oozing off and reforming. She was little but a puddle of black ink in the corner of his cell when she spoke again.

"He doesn't know I'm here," she whispered. "He doesn't know who I am. He doesn't know what I am, nor what he is. He forgot us long ago to rot here beneath the surface, and now we are so weak..."

"Beneath the surface… where are we? What do you mean he doesn't know what he is? How do you know him?" Robin cut himself short, although he still had questions. He didn't want to appear entirely helpless and ignorant, although he had a feeling she already knew.

"He was one of us, back when my sisters and I thrived on the brutal battlefields of your more gruesome ancestors," she made a moaning sound as though remembering something pleasurable. "He was our only brother, and he was the greatest of us, but he lost his wings and lost his lust for death, and he forgot his sisters, Macha and Diriel and meeeee, and he forgot what it was to drink a child's blood from a severed artery in front of its mother, and to gut the most desperate of men as they weep and moan, and to revel in sweet pain" her voice was fading.

"What do you mean his wings? What are you, some sort of demons? Angels of death?" Robin called out, finding himself in the uncomfortable position of wanting her to leave, and wanting her to stay and answer questions.

"Morgantiiii…" she hissed angrily. "We are no angels. We answer to no devil or god."

"Wait!... wait, why are you in my cell if he didn't send you then?"

"Boy, you are in my realm, the underground. He sent you to me, I was not sent to you."

Robin pushed himself off against the wall and stumbled forward, "Wait!" he took a hesitant step closer to her. "Wait, please… will you help me?"

Her response was unexpected. She screamed an awful cry of rage that resembled a thousand ravens screeching and cawing, and then "I am no tool to be used you foul human! I am not your pet!" and the puddle that he assumed had been leaking out of his cell from a crack in the wall rushed forward into what he assumed was her full form. She was an exotic, beautiful woman for a moment and then spikes erupted from her shoulders and face and he realized they were feathers and she rushed him and great claws burst from her fingers and immediately went to the one place any male creature fears to put near sharp objects. Robin gasped and raked out with his fingers, hooking onto what he took to be her eye sockets. Nonexistent light glared out of her inky black eyes right above his fingers. She was cawing and screeching and Robin thought she might be laughing as her long claw brushed uncomfortably against him and, panicking Robin slammed his finger up into the black pool that was her eye and his finger gushed into it, and then the rest of his hand followed as he shoved with all his might to get her away from him. She shrieked and her claw left him as she reached for her own face to dislodge his hand sunk to the wrist in her oozing eye. Robin swung her around by her head and slammed her into the wall. He swung her back in front of him and kicked out, thrusting himself into the wall behind him and thrusting her onto the floor as her face dislodged from his hand.

She screamed and cawed and black feather-shaped feathers flew from her fallen form. She oozed and melted and reformed and melted again. A slender, feathered arm snaked out of her puddle and latched to the ground, pulled herself away from him towards the corner she'd been trying to get away earlier.

Another arm flopped forward and she slithered forward again. Her form suddenly liquidized with another screech and her inky shadow pooled into the corner and disappeared and Robin was left gasping, breathless and shaking, alone in the dark.

ooooooooooooooooooo

"Well that sucked," Veltis as she trickled down the sewer line towards her sisters.

"What where you trying to do? What did that accomplish? If you wanted him dead you should have gutted him not tried to pleasure him!" Diriel oozed along the pipeline, still too weak to take any sort of form as Veltis had accomplished. Veltis scowled.

"I don't know what happened, I did that move on ten thousand dying men in my time, gave them one last jack off you know? The least I could do I figured…"

Macha laughed haughtily. "You are not what you were then Veltis, we are weak now."

"But we've been gathering strength. I've felt it. He must be gaining strength. Soon he will remember us, and come for us."

Macha longed for her claws. She was the one of the three sisters that could produce venom through her deadly nails that sizzled like acid and was instantly fatal and painfully brutal. She didn't know if their brother was the cause of the strength that was growing within them, but she wasn't going to complain if it meant she would soon kill again.

"He took long enough, that lazy bastard," Macha grumbled.

ooooooooooooooooooooooooo

Beast Boy released Cyborg from his claws as he beat past the huge front Tower doors into the entrance. Cyborg hit the ground and stumbled to one knee hard. Beast Boy phased back to his human form as he hit ground and Starfire landed hard next to him. She took one look at the Tower halls and then fell to her knees looking distraught. The first landing of stairs was twisted and melted, charred black soot stained the walls and bits of rubbage lay burning and smoking. Someone had been in the Tower. Someone with bombs.

Cyborg swore softly and put a comforting hand on Starfire's shoulder. As he strode quietly forward. Beast Boy, surprising both Starfire and Cyborg whipped out a hand into Cyborg's stomach. Cyborg let out an 'Oof' as Beast Boy shook his head.

"No," he whispered, "What if they're still here?"

Cyborg shrugged uncertain, "There's nothin' for it man, I gotta recharge, plus we need to clean ourselves up bad with the med supplies and all that stuff's in the tower."

Starfire had begun to cry as she stared back at the ruined stair case. "We left him," she said with an almost unbelieving tone. Cyborg glanced worriedly at her and then back to Beast Boy.

"You go first then," he said, "as a fly or something."

Beast Boy scowled. "I can't go as something that can't hear well or see well, I'll go as a rat," he said.

Cyborg scoffed, "yea cause when the bad guys see a green rodent, it isn't gonna give away yer identity at all."

Beast Boy crossed his arms stubbornly. "You two stay here till I check out the building," he said crossly.

Cyborg shrugged helplessly as Beast Boy shrank into his rat form and scurried forward into the wreckage of the Tower. The place was eerie in the flickering fire light from the burning wrecks. Beast Boy climbed the railing, as the stairs were blown away, up to the second floor, and then the third, and found nothing. But on the fourth level, the level where their master computer was located as well as the common room and kitchen, he saw a flickering shadow around the corner as he drew near it. Slamming to a halt he sneaked under a smashed bit of metal and cement that used to be the wall and began to inch forward. Someone was definitely there. He clamored over a bit of pipe leaking olive colored liquid and was horrified to find a hand clamping around his waist. Twisting violently Beast Boy expanded his form into a Lynx and swiped viciously.

Kyle, who had not noticed the rat's off coloring in the dim light and was only looking for something he could shoot was thoroughly surprised when his victim was suddenly yowling and swiping feline claws at him. Throwing it away from him Kyle pulled out the most massive pistol Beast Boy had ever seen from the hem of his pants and aimed it directly at him. Beast Boy leaped desperately to the side, his form growing, his feet elongating, his nose stretching until he was bounding around the room as a smallish green kangaroo. He leapt and pounced around the wreckage as Kyle tried to get a clean shot, and when he finally did pull the trigger beast Boy thought he'd be deaf from the blasting noise that exploded from the barrel. Recovering quickly Beast Boy bounded forward and kicked out viciously at the man straight into his gut. Kyle doubled over dropping his firearm and gasping in a breathless yell of pain. Beast Boy aimed a hefty kangaroo-jab at his head, and then a good kangaroo-punch to his face and Kyle fell over, losing consciousness quickly. Retaking his human form, Beast Boy glanced down at his handy work satisfied. Until he heard that voice.

"Aww Kanga-woo Jack knocked out my hit man. Not a very nice rodent are you," he said pleasantly.

Beast Boy spun around terrified.

"How did you get here so fast?" stammered Beast Boy, "You were in the warehouse! You can't have crossed town without flying and you can't fly!"

The Man in Black merely smiled kindly. Beast Boy, for the first time in his life, reached for a fire arm.

Beast Boy aimed the Desert Eagle he'd pulled from Kyle's body and eased the trigger. Fire shot out a foot from the barrel of the gun. He felt like a hammer slammed into the palm of his hand. A terrible piercing ring vibrated against his eardrums. He fell backward onto the deck but managed to keep his pistol trained on the dark man. Half of the Man in Black's face evaporated in a spray of blood and bone fragments. His body snapped back and for a moment he stood in a position that seemed to defy gravity, his back arched backwards violently. Then he slowly made his way back upright, his movements jerky and sudden until he once again stood staring at the green changeling.

"Miss me?" the Dark Man asked smiling with only half a set of teeth. Beast Boy's eyes glazed over with terror.

He screamed as he pulled the trigger again, "WHAT ARE YOU?"

He thought he'd aimed between the eyes but the bullet ripped through the Man in Black's chest and out the other side taking a large chunk of flesh and blood with it. He pulled the trigger again and again. He felt like his wrist would shatter at any moment. The slugs opened craters in the Dark Man's chest.

"WHAT ARE YOU?????" Beast Boy screamed.

BAM BAM BAM BAM click click click

The Dark Man was hunched over his shattered chest. His skull dipped down into a ragged crater and a slightly burned pink mass of brain was exposed. The half a face that was still there was twisted and bloody, a shapeless mass of flesh with a crisp, upraised corner in what should have been his mouth. The Man in Black was smiling.

The huge pistol slipped from Beast Boy's grip and he felt something stirring within him. Something that felt like his warebeast, only more feral, a hot steely grip of insanity. More gripping and terrifying and beastly. And then the scream reached Beast Boy's ears and it was piercing and inhuman and terrified. And as the pistol slipped from between his fingers and the Man in Black took a step towards him, he knew it was him screaming.

oooooooooooooooooooooooooo

The pulse was there again. Warm and gentle, familiar bursts of violet filled his eyes and he would have done anything to keep the comfort they gave him.

Robin sat in the corner farthest from the one which the Morganti had made her escape through, his legs pulled forward against his chest and his good arm wrapped around them. He'd been attempting to stay awake to watch for her, or the sisters she'd spoken of, but his exhaustion was insistent and he'd been drifting. There was no sense of time in his cell. He was suspicious he was underground, on the same level as the city sewer lines, as the sun never seemed to penetrate the hallway outside his single barred window.

His arm ached and his tongue felt thick and swollen, as no one had brought another cup of water for him in a very long time. He pushed his pain back with a constant train of thought. But as he grew more strained and weary he'd dropped into a light drift of sleep, the violet pulse calming him and soothing his bullet wound.

He started awake when someone slammed a door open somewhere above him and started stomping heavily down a flight of stone stairs leading to his level. He was angry at the interruption as the pulse faded from his mind. But he noticed as he pushed against the wall with his back to stand up that the biting ache had lessoned considerably.

His door rattled and swung open. An annoyed looking woman in low jeans and a tight white shirt pouted at him.

"He'e's ya damn water," she snapped chucking a water bottle at him. She turned around shaking her hips ready to walk out. Robin caught the water bottle and then chucked it as hard as he could back at her retreating form. It hit her in the back of the head and she shrieked "OW!" and spun around looking exceedingly pissed off.

"You little bitch!" she yelled at him. Robin regarded her for a moment, deciding she had no idea who she was dealing with, and then leapt forward, landing right in front of her bringing his fist down onto her shoulder. She fell to her knees yelping out and Robin kneed her in the face. Blood welled under her nose and she brought both of her hands to her face and shrieked "You can't hit me I'ma girl you fuckin' pansy!"

Robin grabbed the back of her shirt and dragged her into his cell. She screamed protest and started pounding her fists against him demanding release. _THIS is my cell guard? _Robin thought wearily. He opened his mouth to tell her to give him the cell key and a voice cut him off from above him.

"Hey babe what's the hold up? Aint you done yet, I wanna go get some'thin ta eat!" Robin tried to cover her mouth but he was too late and before he could stop her she'd begun to shriek: "He's a psycho killer Dustin he's trying to RAPE ME help me oh my go-" Robin knocked her out in one merciful blow and then snatched a key half sticking out of her jeans pocket.

He ran to the wall that the door was set into and leaned up against it. He heard quick thumping footsteps as Dustin ran down to help the girl and seeing her laying on the floor he sprinted into the empty-looking cell without looking. Robin round-house kicked him in the back and he dumped to the floor, slamming his forehead into the cold stone and groaning groggily as blood splattered from a cut that split open on his forehead. Stepping out, Robin closed the cell door and locked it shut. Pausing to let his heart slow down he stooped over and picked up the water bottle he'd thrown at the girl and drank deeply.

He capped it and, keeping it in hand, started towards the stair. He'd gotten three steps forward when he heard her.

"New-meat," whispered Veltis. She was standing in his cell looking out at him through the barred window, no longer a shadow, but fully tangible. Jet black feathers sprouted from around her face and down her neck. "You left me some snacks. Such a sweet boy..."

Robin took a step back towards the cell but she'd disappeared beneath the window. "Stop, don't touch them!" he yelled angrily running back. He shoved the key back into the lock and pushed the door open. She was hunched over the man, her vicious claws tracing his arm leaving a thin slice leaking blood and Dustin moaned and tried to move away in his semi-conscious state. She was smirking at him. Robin bared his teeth at her as he rushed forward to help his former gaurd and swung his leg out, catching her under the chin. She snapped back and, giggling leapt to her feet and stepped backwards. Robin moved to step forward over the bodies of Dustin and the girl to protect them but stopped in his tracks. The wall behind the harpy was dripping with a thick, black goo. It pooled at Veltis's feet and then began to build upon itself, forming into two more shadow women. Robin held his ground, his fists raised.

One of the women formed in a crouching position. She was in what Robin thought to be their true form, covered in inky black feathers. She looked different than Veltis however. Her claws were shorter and thicker and they were dripping liquid that sizzled when it hit the ground. When she smiled, all of her teeth were sharpened. The other woman, taller then the other two, had black blades pointing towards her body sprouting below her hands from her wrists, folded beneath her forearms. Robin thought she could probably rotate them outwards in battle. Both of the Morganti that had just formed were more shadow than Veltis, nearly transparent. The crouching one held her hand out towards Robin.

"Pretty boy," she said and venom dripped from her claws, right onto the girl. She stirred in her sleep as it began sizzling into her skin and then she began to scream in agony as her eye lids flew open and her hands reached up to her chest and began clawing where the poison had fallen. The tall one flipped her wrist, bringing a blade forward and falling to one knee plunged it deep into Dustin's chest. Dustin opened his mouth and gurgled as blood gushed from it. She ripped her blade out and blood spurted feet as his heart pumped its final bit of blood. The Morganti was covered in it and she smiled and smeared it onto her hand. She licked it off as Macha, the venomous one, leaned over and bit into the girl who was squirming in apparent agony, her mouth open in a silent scream.

Robin didn't see anymore. He'd turned away and began to run.

Veltis called out to him.

"Where you goin' new-meat? You know how it goes… and eye for an eye! You took mine… so I'm taking this girl's," she said reaching down and plucking out the girl's eyeball. The girl rolled her remaining eye up and passed out. Macha's poison was slow acting. She would bleed to death from the wounds Macha was leaving as she munched at her long before the venom would take her.

Macha looked up as the boy disappeared around a corner chewing on a mouthful of the girl's arm.

"Well," she started, "what a pansy!"

Veltis smiled. They were growing stronger. And now that they could kill, they would continue to grow in strength. Even as Diriel continued to lick Dustin's blood off of her arms and hands, and Macha munched on the girl, their forms were growing heavier, less transparent. They were no longer shadows to lay hiding in the sewers. They would return to the mortal world and feast.

oooooooooooooooooooooo

Starfire had Cyborg by the armpits and was flying up the shaft where the stairway had used to climb before they'd registered who was screaming.

"BEAST BOY!" Starfire shrieked as they climbed one, two, three levels. Here the stairs were still intact but Starfire smashed through them in her haste to reach their team mate. Dropping Cyborg she darted into the room that her sensitive Tamaranian ears had detected his yell to come from.

Beast Boy lay on the ground, seemingly unhurt but his eyes were vacant and unblinking, staring up at the ceiling. He was shaving uncontrollably and didn't move when Starfire placed a hand on his shoulder.

"Star!" Cyborg yelled as he entered the room. Glancing to him she saw him gesturing wildly at the huge window. Whipping her head around she saw a dark shape with jet black wings sprouted from the shoulder blades. He flapped away and Starfire leapt to her feet and then into the air and leapt through the shattered window. She aimed wildly and fired starbolts at the form, green flares slicing through the air in his direction. A couple hit and burned into his flesh but he didn't even seem to notice. A blue spear of light flew past her shoulder and she saw one of Cyborg's cannon blasts flash into the Darkman. It pushed him forward and his wings shook wildly as he steadied himself, but still he flew on without a sign of pain or wound.

Starfire made to follow him but Cyborg called her back. She flew back and they rushed to Beast Boy's side. He'd stopped trembling but had fallen into a state of shock.

"What was that creature friend Cyborg? And why is Beast Boy staring like that?" Starfire asked as Cyborg hoisted the green changeling into his arms.

"I don't know Star…" Cyborg responded gravely.

oooooooooooooooooooooooooo

Outside the Man in Black flapped his mighty wings towards the horizon-line of Jump City. With a great flap and gust of wind, he landed atop the Kelso-Dental Industry building, dust blowing up around his feet. His wings melted from his back and dripped onto the ground around him.

Macha was waiting for him. She crouched in the shadows of one of the air ducts. She stepped out and walked to him.

"Brother," she greeted. Her sharpened teeth bared into a smile.

The Darkman regarded her.

"Who are you?" he asked.

"I am Macha," she said.

The Man in Black nodded as though it was the response he expected.

"And who am I?"

"You are death," Macha whispered adoringly.

The Man in Black watched the rest of his wings ooze to the floor. He took a step out of the puddle they'd become and a smile spread across his face. Macha smiled back, as Diriel and Veltis formed from the shadows behind her.


End file.
